


Copper and Platinum

by firstbornking



Series: Copper and Platinum [3]
Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bullying, Dirty Talk, Drug Use, Emotional Manipulation, First Time, Forced Orgasm, Grooming, I'm Going to Hell, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Incest, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Needles, Possessive Behavior, Praise Kink, Sexual Coercion, Suicide, Swearing, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-23 03:07:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 79,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23971366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firstbornking/pseuds/firstbornking
Summary: ru·in1. to injure irretrievably.2. to induce the surrender of one’s virginity; deflower.In which Rick and Morty do all kinds of wonderful things, Rick waits until he’s done waiting, and Morty develops a distaste for cherries.
Relationships: Rick Sanchez/Morty Smith
Series: Copper and Platinum [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1706875
Comments: 265
Kudos: 496





	1. January, February, March

Morty disliked his grandfather the moment he met him. 

It was something about the way his mother welcomed him back with open arms, her joy tinged with desperation and disbelief. Morty looked at this man he was suddenly supposed to call grandpa and only saw his mother sat on the living room floor on Father’s Day, pouring over an old shoebox of faded cards and faded pictures as she poured herself glass after glass of red zinfandel. He remembered all the times she cooked beef empanadas and arroz con coca-cola and didn’t eat a single bite. He heard her singing quietly to herself when she thought no one could hear, _“Esta niña linda, que nació de noche, quiere que la lleven, a pasear en coche.”_

No, Morty was not exactly thrilled with the unexpected addition to his family. Rick was abrasive and condescending, constantly taking potshots at his father and never hesitating to use his mother’s need for his approval to get his way. It was shocking how quickly the household shifted to revolve around him; in the span of two weeks, the spandrel beneath the stairs was renovated into a small bedroom for him, the garage was cleared out to make room for all his space junk, and he had a reserved spot in front of the TV and at the head of the dinner table. 

Before Morty knew it, it was difficult to remember his life before meeting Rick Sanchez.

It was the winter after he turned twelve. He was halfway through seventh grade, and he remembered looking forward to a long day of playing Minecraft in his pajamas because it was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and school was out. There was a small commotion downstairs, a whirring hum he had never heard before, his mother’s loud gasp and choked voice saying, _“Dad? Is it - is it really you?”_

After that, nothing was the same. 

The first thing Morty noticed about Rick was that he was a raging alcoholic, but that didn’t surprise him. He knew his mother had to have gotten it from somewhere, and he was familiar with all the trappings of heavy alcohol use; the glassy eyes, the slouched posture, the depressive air of rotting potential. It had a certain smell to it that was immediately recognizable, that made Morty curl his nose and turn his head. 

The next thing that was obvious was that his new grandfather was every inch the genius his mother always told him he was. His mind was a thing to be reckoned with, brilliant beyond reason and exceptional in every sense of the word. Within one day of arriving, he smashed the very notion of impossibility into nothing. He pioneered interdimensional travel, harnessed dark matter, and solved Millennium Prize Problems for kicks. Morty watched him build a freeze ray out of a pair of crystal earrings and an old diecast Transformers action figure just because he wanted his beers the perfect temperature instantly. It was obvious why his mother idolized him, and why his father resented him. He was the most extraordinary person Morty had ever met, and it was at once awe-inspiring and deeply intimidating. 

The final thing that was painfully clear was that Rick was a dangerous, domineering man, detached from the hindrances of humanity in a way that screamed _approach at your own risk._ His intense disdain for anyone less intelligent than him, which was everyone, was chilling. If it weren’t for his partiality for his daughter, Morty would have never been able to so much as say hello to him. 

His greeting was careful and shy, and Rick looked down on him with almost scientific curiosity, cool but undeniably interested. 

“Less - less than a one in four chance for that hair color, and you and Summer both came out ginger. I’d wonder about your mom’s relationship with the milkman, b-but with those eyes, you - you’re definitely Jerry’s.”

Morty blinked, no clue how to respond to that. Rick’s scorn for his father was readily apparent, older than his sister and spitefully honed with age. He felt the need to apologize, but for what? It wasn’t his fault Jerry was his dad, not that there was anything wrong with Jerry being his dad, and really, who was Rick to judge? At least Jerry hadn’t left.

“Uhm, oh - okay. You, um, you sound, ah - a-a lot like me.”

It was just an observation, an attempt at making a small connection. They both stuttered in a remarkably similar manner, to the point Morty wondered if speech impediments were inheritable. Rick tilted his head, as if this hadn’t occurred to him, but now that it’d been mentioned was as plain as day. He smirked, and ruffled his grandson’s hair, and said, “Of course I do, Morty. I’m your grandpa.”

Morty’s stomach flipped at the way he said that, his amused expression and easy touch. He ducked under his hand, uncomfortable and itching to back up a step. “Well, that’s - that’s what my mom says, so - well, I guess you are.” 

Rick’s expression flickered, but the smirk was back in place before Morty could read to what. “No guessing about it, Morty. _Your_ mom is _my_ daughter, so go ahead and get used to calling me grandpa.”

Morty didn’t know how to feel about that, so he nodded a noncommittal agreement and stepped out of reach. Rick dropped his hand and considered him as one would a strange, skittish animal. He produced a flask from his lab coat’s breast pocket and pulled from it lazily before leveling Morty with a blithe smile. 

“You and me, Morty, we’re gonna - we’re gonna be - it’s gonna be just the two of us, Morty, you’ll see. Rick and Morty and their adventures, just you wait.”

That was all Morty could handle. He kept nodding and backing up, saying uneasily, “Um, alright, if you - if you say so, Rick.”

Rick watched him go, thoroughly entertained. “Get ready, Morty. Grandpa’s got some crazy fucking shit to show you.”

“Okay, that’s - uhm, I think I hear m-my mom calling. I’m gonna -”

She wasn’t calling, and they both knew that, but Rick just sipped on his liquor and chuckled at him. “Go ahead, Morty. I’ll see you at dinner.”

Morty stumbled over his own feet and caught himself on the partition between the living room and the kitchen. He collected himself as quickly as he could, going red faced at Rick’s snicker. “Of - of course you will, because you live here now, and that’s - that is a thing that has happened.” 

“Don’t worry,” Rick tipped his flask in a toast Morty took no part in and grinned at him. “You’ll get used to it in - in - before you even know it, Morty.”

Morty nodded one last time and left the room so fast he knew it was rude. As he scurried back up to his bedroom, he thought about something he'd heard from Mrs. Hathaway in physics last week, when they were talking about Einstein. She had ended the class with a humorous quote from him, saying, _“The only difference between genius and insanity is that genius has its limits.”_

The limits of Rick’s genius stretched to the edge of the universe and bled into other dimensions. 

If anyone could find a limit for insanity, it’d be him. 

…

Rick settled in fast. There was no awkward boundary testing period, not even the slightest attempt at new arrival etiquette. He made himself at home without apology or reserve, commandeering all the space he needed and then some. He spread his legs wide when he sat down, he drank and he belched and he cursed, and he didn’t waste a single second on tact or courtesy or good manners. 

In short, he was an asshole, extremely difficult to live with, and insufferably crude. He caused an immense amount of tension in the house, and he must have been able to tell that he did, but he didn’t give a damn about it. He ignored Jerry’s quiet seething and passive aggressive digs over the dinner table as easily as passing out drunk on the couch in the middle of the afternoon, which was also a now common occurrence with which Jerry took issue.

The first argument Morty heard between his parents over Rick was about him never cleaning up after himself. 

“- making too big a deal out of it, Jerry. What does it matter if there’s a few extra dishes? I don’t mind doing them for him.”

“Beth, it’s a house _rule_ for a reason; everyone has to pitch in a little. Why should he be the only one that doesn’t have to help out with chores? And it’s not just dishes! He leaves his junk -”

“Oh, here we go again. You are so selfish, you know that? God forbid my dad get to have a little space for his work. You’re just jealous he’s actually getting things _done_ while you sit around all day playing with _Star Wars_ memorabilia -”

“- _those coins were a limited minting!_ And for the last time, I’m not jealous of your dad, Beth!”

“You are! You didn’t want him to move in, and now you’re trying to drive him away!”

“By asking him to rinse off his _plates_? Beth, listen to yourself!”

“I’m not about to start policing my dad about dishes, Jerry, and that’s _final_. He’s got more important things to do with his time, not that you’d know _anything_ about that.”

Jerry flinched, and Morty knew the discussion was over. His father sank against the kitchen table as his mother stormed upstairs to slam their bedroom door. Morty stood out of sight beside the fridge, and listened to his father sigh. 

He didn’t understand what was wrong with asking Rick to clean up after himself. His dad was right. It was completely unfair that they all had to work a little harder to pick up behind him, but Jerry had clearly lost the argument. 

He didn't want to walk in on his father in his moment of defeat, so he snuck across the room to slide through the cracked fire door to the garage, only to yelp when he was pulled through and the door was slammed shut behind him. He flailed to catch his bearings, and Rick stared down his nose at him. 

“Keep this door shut, Morty. I’m - I’m running all these - experiments in here, and I don’t need anything escaping into the house.”

Morty wanted to tell him that he hadn’t been the one to leave the door open, but he tilted his head back to look up at Rick, and then he tilted it back some more, and he forgot what he was going to say. Rick was _tall_ , well over a foot taller than him even slouching. He swallowed. 

“E-escaping?”

“It’s better you don’t know, Morty, trust me.”

Morty nodded, even though trust wasn’t exactly a word he’d use for Rick, and tried to sidestep out from under him. Rick blocked him with a hand on his upper arm, and he froze, shooting him a confused look.

“What is it, Rick?”

“I need your help with something, Morty. Right now - r-r-right this second, come with me.”

“Oh, um, I actually have some h-homework I really need to -”

Rick rolled his eyes, pulling him into the middle of the garage. “I’ll pick it up from some other Morty for you, now c’mon, we’re going.”

“Some other - ? Hey, _wait!_ ”

Rick fired his portal gun, opening a swirling green void in the center of the floor, and before Morty could finish asking what he meant by some other Morty, he'd been shoved into another dimension. 

As soon as his feet hit the ground, he stumbled to his knees and violently lost his lunch. He clutched his stomach, groaning in between wretched dry heaves as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. It felt like all his organs had been shuffled like a deck of cards, like his muscles had been pushed through a meat grinder and reconstituted, like his head was splitting open along its cranial sutures. 

Rick could tell him he was about to die and he’d believe him, full stop. 

“Jeez, never seen anyone hit so hard the first time, Morty,” Rick said from somewhere above him. He didn’t sound too concerned, and if Morty weren't so preoccupied with learning how to breathe through abject agony, he might have glared at him.

Rick hauled him up with a hand under his armpit and held onto him while he regained his footing. Morty opened his eyes, wiping at his mouth with his forearm. He looked up at Rick in aggrieved bewilderment. 

“What just - what - oh, man, oh, jeez, oww…”

The light hurt his eyes, and he pinched them shut again. Rick stepped in front of him and clapped both of his hands on his shoulders, holding him steady as he said, “It’s just - it’s just portal sickness, Morty. It’ll fade fast, don’t w- _errp-_ worry. It won’t be anywhere near as bad next time. You’ll get used to it.”

“I don’t wanna - get _used to_ whatever this is, Rick. Th-this really hurts.”

Rick snorted. “Jesus, you’re sensitive. The first time’s always the worst, okay? Don’t be such a little bitch, Morty.”

Morty flinched, just like his dad had when his mom snapped at him. Rick had only been here a few weeks, but he’d already taken to insulting him as if it were simply a matter of course. Morty hung his head and whispered, “That’s - that’s a really mean thing to say.”

He felt Rick shrug. “Hey, if the shoe fits. Don’t act like a little bitch, I won’t call you a little bitch.”

Morty frowned, but decided it was far more pressing to find out where he was than defend his nascent masculinity. He squinted his eyes, slowly letting them adjust to the light; it was an intense, shimmering blue, as if the sun were a giant halophosphate disco ball. Rick came into focus, towering above him with an impatient expression. His hair was a vivid silver blue, his veins crisscrossing in sapphire tributaries beneath aquamarine skin. Morty was extremely dizzy, but his headache was fading, his nausea dissipating. He gripped Rick’s lapels and asked, “W-w-where did you - where are we?”

“The Dorago Hales on Thrishnar 17.”

Morty glanced around. They were on top of a dark blue crest that ran as far as the eye could see to his left and right, and sloped off into gently diminishing ridges both in front of and behind them. The soil glittered and scintillated every shade of blue imaginable when disturbed by the wind, and colossal turquoise outcrops littered the landscape. He looked back at his grandfather.

“Okay… and… where is that, Rick?”

Rick let go of his shoulders and grabbed his wrist to drag him down the crushed gemstone hillside. “Doesn’t matter, Morty, you don’t have any - any frame of reference to understand, anyway. Just follow me, c’mon already.”

“H-hey! Rick, hey, slow down, stop - stop tugging me - I can’t - I can’t keep up!”

Rick sighed, irascible and restive, but slowed down just enough that Morty could keep pace with him at a light jog. The soil was slippery with powdered semi-precious stones, throwing up plumes of nacreous dust with every step they took. If Rick weren’t in such a rush and he weren’t so disoriented, he might have found it pretty. 

“Hey, where - where are we going, Rick?” 

“A talus cave, Morty. It’s just to the south of this maar. We need to hurry.”

That answered exactly nothing. 

They moved swiftly downwards over the rolling ridges for a few minutes, before Morty noticed great, slithering bulges beneath the soil about a mile off in the direction of the bright blue sun. He nearly lost his footing as he stared at the whale sized disturbances in the dirt, talons digging themselves into his lungs. Rick kept him upright and moving in a tight clip. 

“Don’t worry about them, Morty. They’re just gemseekers. They won’t bother us.”

He sounded sure, but that didn’t console Morty much. He stumbled along behind him, his wrist aching where Rick was clutching it, his stomach all aflutter with alarm. In his mind, a red flag snap-hooked to its halyard and hoisted itself to fly at half staff, and he hesitantly spoke up.

“This is - h-hey, this is really scary, Rick. I don’t w-wanna - please take me back home. _I wanna go home_ , Rick.”

Rick didn’t stop moving, didn’t even look down at him. “I told you, I need your help, Morty. I can’t do this by myself, so quit your goddamn whining and make yourself useful for once, Jesus. I’m not asking you for much, here.” 

Morty looked down at his feet, struggling to keep up with his grandfather’s long gait. He’d been bullied by other kids at school, but he’d never had an adult talk to him like that before. He’d never had anyone talk to him the way Rick did, callous and demanding and so carelessly derisive. He thought of complaining to his parents, but he remembered his mother’s defensive tone, his father’s defeated expression, and he kept on walking. 

Within a quarter hour, the ridges terminated into a wide, shallow crater lake, filled with viscid liquid darker than the night sky and surrounded by massive blue boulders struck through with stunning fissures of lapis lazuli. Upon their approach, the near side of the lake broke in a small splash, and his eyes tracked the movement just quick enough to glimpse a fulgent, forked tail slipping beneath the murky surface. Rick paid it no mind, hanging a right and marching along the edge of the water, taking note of how many rock formations they passed. 

“One… four… seven… it was right - around - here, Morty!” 

He brought them to a halt before three large, flat rocks stood on their ends and propped against one another in a natural teepee. There was a small opening between the two rocks directly in front of them, and Morty’s heart sank into the sand as he guessed what Rick was about to ask him to do. 

“Aww, jeez, Rick,” he mumbled nervously, looking into the pitch black aperture with mounting doubt. "I’m really - I don’t want - uh, I’m feeling a lot of - anxiety, here, and I don’t think I -”

Rick pulled him closer to the opening, brushing off his concerns with all the sensitivity of a monkey wrench to the shin. “Jesus Christ, your mom was right. Jerry really did a number on you.”

Morty didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but he knew it wasn’t nice. He tried to yank his arm from Rick’s grip, but his grandfather held fast, fingers tightening against his struggles to free himself. Even throwing all his weight down, Morty couldn’t get him to budge an inch. “Rick, let me - hey, ow! Let me go! You’re - hurting me, Rick -”

Rick released him, and Morty overbalanced and fell on his bottom with a startled, “Oomph!”

He rubbed his wrist and glared up at Rick, but the effect was lost with the tears in his eyes. Rick looked down on him dispassionately, and Morty felt the urge to curl in on himself. He broke eye contact and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Fuck, you’re a real crybaby, you know that, Morty? Get up.”

Morty bit his lip and did so, eyes stinging. He breathed in unsteadily through his nose, and stared down at his feet as he stood next to Rick. He wasn’t going to cry. He wasn’t.

“The best thing for anxiety is exposure, Morty. You gotta learn how to face things head on, or you’re never gonna stop having to wash your pissy sheets at two in the fucking morning.”

Morty flushed, a hard pit of humiliation developing in his stomach. “That’s - I - I’m not - I haven’t been -”

Rick waved him off dismissively. He walked over to the hole between the rocks and crouched next to it. “Yeah, deny your developmental delays, great idea, that’ll solve your bedwetting problem, Morty. Your mom’ll lemme know when you break the washing machine from overuse, and then guess who’s gonna have to fix the damn thing?”

“Jesus, Rick, that’s so - you’re so - y-you don’t have to -” Morty gave up before he even started trying, pinching his mouth shut as shame pinked his face. ‘ _You’re a jerk,’_ he wanted to say. _‘Shut up, you old bastard,'_ was on the tip of his tongue, but he was dreadfully aware of the fact that Rick was his only way back home, and he kept his mouth shut.

He brushed off the seat of his pants and looked up at the sky so he didn’t have to look at Rick. It was a dense, midnight blue, streaked with thick clouds and dotted with thousands of pinpricks of radiant light. The sun didn’t outshine the stars, and they hung together in a brilliant noonday nightfall. He’d never seen anything like it, and he guessed no one else on Earth had, either. 

Except for Rick, of course. 

“Get over here, Morty, we don’t have much time. It’s about to open.”

Rick’s voice was muffled, and Morty glanced back at him. He had his head ducked in the opening, and had obviously caught sight of whatever he’d impatiently dragged him across an alien gemstone desert for. He withdrew and sat back on a knee, waving Morty over urgently. “I said _get_ _over_ _here_ , Morty. Light a fire under your ass, c’mon!”

Morty didn’t know what to do besides listen to him. If this was how he acted, no wonder his mom didn't want to ask him to do the dishes. He took the last few steps to the small cave, and Rick snatched him down by the wrist that was already aching. 

“Ow, Rick! Jesus, stop -”

“Shut up already, Morty. We’ve only got a few minutes. Lay down here, and I’ll lower you in.”

Rick pushed down on his shoulders, until his chest was flush with the blue sand and his face was lined up with the opening. It would be a tight fit, but it looked just wide enough for him to make it through. It was definitely too small for Rick. 

“Ah, jeez, oh, man, oh, god, I-I-I r-really - I’m not -”

Rick grabbed him under his armpits and started pushing him into the black hole. He yelped and braced his hands on the surrounding rock, fear of the unknown finally outweighing his fear of refusing his grandfather. “No, no, no! I don’t wanna go in there, Rick! Stop - _stop it!_ ”

Rick sighed in exasperation, and let him go. “Oh, my god, Morty, you are such a fucking chickenshit. There’s nothing dangerous in there; y-y-you gotta trust me. You think I’d let you get hurt the very first time I take you out?”

Morty got his hands under himself, but didn’t push up. His breathing was a shuddery mess. “I-I don't know. Would you?”

Rick rolled his eyes. “No. Now do grandpa a solid, and crawl into this here Krelaxian kite nest.”

“Krelax-a- _what now?_ ”

“Abandoned! Jesus, Morty, relax!” Rick threw his hands up in what Morty considered disproportionate annoyance, as if Morty’s hesitance were a grave personal affront against him. “It’ll take like two seconds, throw me a bone here, Morty! I need this for my - sci-science, Morty!”

Morty didn’t know what he found more insulting; Rick’s verbal abuse, or his absurd vagueness. He tilted his head. “What exactly is it, Rick?”

Rick sideyed him, expression unforthcoming, and said, “Poke your head in, and find out.”

Morty glanced between his grandfather and the cave, frozen on the foreign ground. “Could - could I not?”

“Nope.”

“... please?”

Rick fished his flask out and knocked it back pointedly. “We’re not leaving until I get what I came for, Morty.”

He waited, and Morty watched him wait, and within a minute, Morty’s shoulders sagged. Rick slipped his flask back in its pocket and leaned over him, setting a hand on the small of his back. “I’ll hold onto you so you don’t fall in, okay?”

“You…” he stared into the mysterious opening, and swallowed hard before he asked, “... you promise it’s safe, Rick?”

Rick raised a hand to a god he didn’t believe in, and said, “I promise, Morty.”

That wasn’t as comforting as he’d hoped it’d be, but it would have to do. He sighed, and tried to breathe out his unease, and didn’t succeed. “Well… okay, then.”

“Thatta boy,” Rick said, teeth flashing in ultraviolet approval. Morty’s stomach somersaulted and his face went hot and he didn’t know why. _‘Thatta boy’_ was definitely nicer than _‘little bitch,’_ he supposed, but he was really too busy worrying about what was awaiting him inside the cavern to consider it much. 

He reached his hands in first, gripping the interior edges of the rock. It was smooth and damp and cool to the touch, and Rick grasped him about the ribcage to assist his entrance. He slipped his head through, and he blinked as his pupils dilated in the darkness. 

It was a sheer drop immediately inside, and his sense of equilibrium rebelled as his shoulders and chest followed his head and arms over the edge. If it weren’t for Rick’s hands on his waist counterbalancing his weight, he’d have completely panicked. It wasn’t totally dark inside; the walls faintly glowed, casting deep shadows throughout the hollow, which Morty could now see was about five feet deep and ten feet wide at the point of entry. He heard the gentle ebb and flow of the lake towards the back of the cave, and he smelled the faint petrichor of damp growth, the odor of cut grass springing back after a heavy rain. 

His hands touched friable soil, and then he saw it. A large, iridescent flower, the size of a dinner plate and the most vibrant yellow he had ever seen, made all the more so by its stark contrast to the pervasive blue of its surrounding environment. It unfolded like a stargazer lily, but its petals were thick, glossy, and studded through with fantastic specks of bioluminescence. 

“Oh, wow.”

“You see it, Morty?” Rick asked, shifting his grip to his hips to give him a few more inches of reach. 

“Yeah - th-the flower?”

“Uh huh. Now, I just need you to pick it for me, M-Morty. _Very carefully_. Use both your hands, and cup it around the stem at the base, and pull directly up. Go slow, okay?” 

Morty followed his grandfather’s directions, gingerly sliding his hands beneath the flower’s sepals. Its texture was unlike anything he’d ever felt before, waxen and soft, with the give of a just ripened peach, and as soon as he touched it, it released a scent like warming spices, like baked goods at Thanksgiving. He pulled straight up towards his chest, and the flower’s receptacle broke readily from its peduncle. 

“O-okay, Rick, I’ve got - _whoa_ ,” Morty cut off in a gasp, because the bioluminescence riveting the flower’s petals brightened before his eyes, beaming like a flashlight in the dark. Rick pulled him back up, but Morty was so entranced by the botanical light show he didn’t even notice when he was back on his feet. He stared down at the flower cradled in his hands, and watched in awe as the lights started to bead up and trickle from the tips of its petals, a gentle drift of luminous snow. 

“It’s beautiful,” he whispered.

Rick stood behind him, blue hands on his shoulders. He looked down on his grandson’s illuminated face, and said nothing. Morty glanced up at him in curiosity, and asked, “Was this all you wanted, Rick?”

His grandfather’s expression was oddly reserved. He nodded once. “Yeah. This is it.”

Morty looked back at the spectacle of light dripping through his fingertips, and thought that maybe his fear had been unwarranted. Rick only wanted his help picking a flower? The coruscating sparks fluttered on the wind like fireflies, and Morty watched them float away in open mouthed wonder.

Maybe, he’d been too quick to judge.

There was a shrill sound from behind the ridge they’d descended, an echoing screech that ripped through the warm silence. Morty jumped and looked in the direction of the noise, but Rick had opened a portal and pulled him through before he could discover what it was. He stumbled back into their garage, reeling and woozy but nowhere near as seasick as he’d been the first time, just like Rick had said.

“Careful, careful with it, Morty,” Rick said, catching him by his upper arms. “If you even bruise it, it’ll ooze a sap that can bond quasicrystals to Teflon.”

Morty stood upright and held the flower to his chest. “You mean like superglue?”

Rick scoffed and walked to his workbench. “I mean like an adhesive strong enough to keep your parents’ marriage together, Morty.”

The bang and clatter of cluttered cabinets being opened and rifled through filled the room, and Morty looked over at his grandfather. He was searching for something in his untidy mess of cardboard boxes and tool chests. “Where is it… what did I pack it in, damn it…”

For a lifelong man of science, Rick was surprisingly disorganized. He upturned an entire box, dumping all manner of sensitive lab equipment carelessly across the concrete. Morty heard a beaker shatter, and he asked timidly, “What’re - um, what’re you looking for, Rick?”

Rick kicked through the accoutrements of science fiction at his feet. “My crescograph, Morty, not that you'd have any clue what that is. It’s around here somewhere…” 

“I could - um, maybe help you look?”

Rick ignored him. He sifted through copper alembics and petri dishes and volumetric flasks, crumpled newspaper and broken styrofoam scattered amidst the laboratory glassware. He finally opened the bottom drawer of a Kobalt toolbox and produced a small wooden box with a victorious shout. 

“Found the fucker! Ugh, I-I-I gotta start actually labeling shit, goddamnit.”

Going by the state of the garage, Morty doubted he’d ever get around to doing that. He tilted his head at the little box, and asked, “What's that for?”

Rick pressed a button on top of it, and tossed it into the open space between the workbench and the washing machine. It unfolded into a one legged table with a smoked glass case affixed atop it. Inside the case was a contraption Morty had never seen before, but judging from its general build and the suffix Rick had used, he could guess it was some sort of measurement device.

“Is that like a microscope?” He stepped over to its right side and looked at a metal cylinder suspended above what appeared to be a monocular. The flower was growing heavier in his hands. It weighed about as much as a gallon of milk, and his arms were getting tired. 

Rick stood beside him and nodded, expression mildly surprised. “Yeah, actually. How about that, M-Morty. You’re not tota- _uurgh_ -totally hopeless.”

Morty frowned, but let the insult roll off his back. It was just how Rick communicated. Compared to how he spoke to Jerry, it could almost be taken as his version of a compliment. “So, it’s for looking at this flower?”

“God, you ask a lotta questions,” he sighed, and opened a glass door in the case. “Yes, it’s for observing microscopic movements in plants. Set it here, Morty.”

He indicated a tray between two thin metal rods, and Morty gently set the flower down. Rick set about hooking electrodes to its pistil, adjusting the lever arms into a perfect parallelogram and calibrating the micrometer of the device. Morty watched him in fascination, unable to tear his eyes away from his grandfather’s display of competence. His features were sharp with technical skill; his eyes keen with scientific prowess; his hands deft with a casual grace Morty had only ever seen before in apex predators on nature documentaries. 

He was in a league all his own. 

In less than a minute, the device was set up to Rick’s standards. He flicked a switch on a transformer behind a set of hooked weights attached to thin chains before shutting the door. It hummed softly, and the flower continued to decant twinkling orbs of light to the bottom of the chamber, and Morty had to ask one more question. 

“What’s it called, Rick?”

Rick slouched next to him, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He looked at him as he looked at the flower. “A tourmaline, Morty.”

“It’s really pretty.”

“Yeah,” Rick said. “It’s pretty much priceless.”

They stood in silence for a moment.

“... so, uh, can I -” Morty looked at the garage’s fire door, uncertain if he could go now or not. 

“W-wait - just wait one sec,” Rick opened another portal to his left and disappeared into it. Morty stood alone and confused for a couple minutes, before the buzz of interdimensional travel filled the room again, and Rick returned with a thin stack of paper in his hand. He gave it to Morty, and Morty stared down at his own handwriting in mystification. 

“This is it, right? English and social studies?”

It was the homework Morty needed to do, except it was done. The m’s were sharp and the circles on the b’s were too big and the a’s were all in cursive because he couldn’t print them. It was definitely his handwriting. He nodded, and shot Rick a puzzled look. Rick just shrugged.

“I said I’d get it for you, Morty.”

“Oh, that’s - really -” Morty set the papers against his chest and eyed Rick in wary gratitude, saying tentatively, “Th-thank you, Rick.”

Rick turned from him, ostensibly done with their interaction. He went back to his workbench and began setting up two Erlenmeyer flasks and a tripod burner stand. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Shit’s useless, but if it gets you to chill the fuck out…”

He trailed off into muttering about plastic tubing and Graham condensers, and Morty decided to leave him to it. 

He got to his room and set the copy of his homework on his desk. He flicked through the packets. It really was all done, and by his own hand. 

Sitting down on his bed, he wondered what to do with the rest of his newly freed up evening. Rick had just saved him over two hours of identifying character motivations and answering multiple choice questions about the Bill of Rights. He could play Minecraft until bedtime, now. 

“Huh.”

Maybe, Rick wasn’t so bad. 

…

Jerry wasn’t much of a handyman.

Morty watched his father try and fail to start the Troy-Bilt lawn mower in the driveway. He yanked the pull cord uselessly, sweat soaking through the back of his shirt under the late morning March sun. The engine didn’t even sputter, and he threw his hands up in defeat. 

“I don’t know what it could be. I checked the oil and the spark plug. It’s got fresh gas in it.”

His mother sighed. “We’ll just pay someone to mow the lawn until we can afford a new one.”

Her disdain was flat and tired. She turned her back on him, and he trailed her inside hopelessly. It went unsaid that she’d foot the bill for another lawn mower, and Jerry’s head hung low.

It wasn’t yet peak mowing season, but it had been unseasonably warm for the past week, and spring was fast approaching. Their yard wasn’t ready for a trim, but it was greening up and would be soon. Morty looked at the red lawn mower and wondered what could be wrong with it, but beyond gas and oil knew nothing of troubleshooting small engines. 

“Ugh, I’d call him a worm, but at least worms help shit grow. What a fucking loser.”

Rick stepped out of the open garage door, glaring after Jerry in disgust. Morty wrung his hands in front of his chest, only able to look at Rick through the corner of his eye. “Jeez, Rick, take it easy. That’s - that's my dad.”

“God, you don’t hafta remind me, Morty. A man that can’t even clean out a carburetor is the father of my grandkids? Jesus fucking wept.”

Morty blinked. “A carburetor? What’s that?”

“You mean you - you don’t even know what a carburetor _is_ , Morty?”

He couldn’t have sounded more offended if Jerry had just shit in his bed and laughed at him when he laid in it. Morty looked down at his feet, shrugging in embarrassment. “I - well, um, no. Sh-should I?”

Rick looked absolutely appalled. “You're _Rick’s_ _grandson_ , of course you should know basic fucking engine parts, Christ!”

Rick grabbed his arm and pulled him over to the dead lawn mower, saying along the way, “Alright, I’m fixing this, Morty. Time for a lesson in small engine repair. I ain’t gonna repeat a goddamn thing, so get ready to listen the _fuck up_ , Morty.”

Morty followed, swept along as if by a landslide. Rick was a natural disaster constantly in the making, his whims acts of god to be weathered, his temper a storm to be endured. Morty had quickly learned it was much easier to just nod and say, “Al-alright, Rick.”

Rick grabbed the lawn mower by its handle and dragged it and his grandson into the garage. He snatched up a toolbox from his workbench and dropped it with a sharp _clunk_ beside them. “Can you at least tell screwdrivers apart?”

Morty stared at him blankly, and he wiped a hand over his face, muttering, “Piece of shit motherfucking - worthless parasite, can’t believe my daughter - _uuugh_.”

Rick sounded genuinely pained, and Morty absently scuffed a shoe against the concrete. “I mean - I - I’m sure he was gonna teach me soon. I’m not even thirteen yet.”

“You’re old enough to tell the difference between a Phillips and a flathead, Morty, don’t even try to defend your incompetent dipshit of a dad.”

Morty grabbed his elbow and looked at the lawn mower. He didn’t like the way Rick talked about his father, but he really couldn’t deny any of his insults. His chest went tight as he said, “I’m not all that - m-my teachers say that I’m - I mean…” his voice trailed off into something small and weak as he asked, “... d’you really think I could learn, Rick?”

Rick shot him a severe look, the line of his brow lowering into a staunch line. “You can learn anything I decide to teach you, Morty.” 

Morty’s face went warm, and his stomach fluttered like a wounded little bird, and he said, “Okay, Rick. If-if-if y-you really wanna - if you think so.”

Rick shucked off his lab coat and tossed it on top of the dryer, pulling the sleeves of his ratty blue sweater up over his elbows. He threw open the lid of the toolbox and began picking out the required instruments, naming each one as he went. “Flathead screwdriver, needle-nose pliers, ratchet and socket set. We’re gonna need carb cleaner, too; there’s a can of Gumout next to my time travel shit.”

Morty went to the shelf behind them and fetched it, a red and white aerosol spray can that said _Jet Spray Carb/Choke_ with a red straw attached to the nozzle, and he held it in his hands as he watched his grandfather work. Rick disconnected the spark plug and removed the air filter housing and engine case with the screwdriver, explaining as he went, “The carburetor maintains the air to fuel ratio for combustion, Morty. It needs to be clean, or it won’t - it can’t pull gas to run the engine. It’s super fucking inefficient and outdated, but they’re low-cost and pretty easy to maintain if-if-if you know what you’re doing.” 

Morty listened carefully as Rick set aside the air filter and took the socket wrench to loosen the bolt holding the bowl of the carburetor in place. Gas leaked out, and Rick pulled a mechanic’s rag from his back pocket and wiped off his fingers. “Cheap gas sits in the carb all winter long and gums it up, Morty. Its jets are just - just clogged. Take that cleaner and spray it in here.” 

He pointed at the throttle body he had just opened up, and Morty did as he was told. The smell of acetone and coal tar wafted across his face, saccharine and reminiscent of paint thinner, and he coughed slightly. “It’s - oh, that’s really strong, Rick.”

“Yeah, toluene’ll fuck you up if you’re not careful. Don’t - don’t breathe it in if you don’t wanna get lit on a little hippie crack, Morty.” 

Morty’s eyes went wide and he held his breath as he sprayed over the throttle plate and inside the choke valve shaft. Rick laughed at him and inhaled the areated solvent deeply. “What, scared of getting high?”

“I’m _twelve_.”

“So?” 

Morty frowned, unsettled. He set the can down, glancing out in the empty front yard. “I don’t like drugs, Rick.”

“Well, obviously,” Rick snorted, nabbing the needle-nose pliers and scrounging around in the toolbox until he found a thin metal pin. “You’re a neurotic little fucking buzzkill terrified of having fun; of course you’d be a wet blanket both in _and_ out of bed.” 

“Hey! That’s - that’s so - god, Rick - you’re - there’s no -” Morty sputtered, unable to find the words to stand up for himself. He stomped his foot and started to turn away, but Rick stopped him with a damp, dirty hand on his forearm, saying, “Get down here, Morty, your hands’ll fit better.” 

Rick clamped the pin in the pliers and handed it to him. “There’s an emulsion tube in there that needs to be cleared, okay? Just get the - poke the ports with this needle a-a-a few times to open them up.”

His grandfather had him kneel down in front of him and guided his hands, showing him how to finesse the pin into the ports to work through the sludge of stagnant gasoline soaked through with chemical solvents. “Right here at the base is the main jet that regulates how much fuel goes into the engine, depending on the position of the throttle,” he pulled on the cable running down the handle to demonstrate how it opened and closed the valve behind where the air filter went. “Fuel passes through and goes into the tube, where it mixes with air and emulsifies. D’you know what that means, Morty?” 

Morty shook his head no, hands starting to sweat. It was warm in the garage, the sun steadily making its way higher in the sky and wearing away at winter’s dying chill. Rick held his wrist in a way that was becoming distressingly familiar, and said, “It’s when two things mix that usually can’t. One gets dispersed in the other - in this case, air in gasoline. It’s the only way the fuel can atomize and properly combust in the engine.” 

Rick grabbed his rag back up and started wiping away at the dissolved gunk. He took the pliers from Morty’s hands and rubbed his upper arm once as he said, “Alright, just gotta put her back together and she’ll run, no problem.”

Rick reattached and replaced everything he had taken apart, and stood behind the mower. He primed the engine, depressed the handle and grabbed the pull cord. Morty sat back on his knees as his grandfather pulled the cord halfway a couple times before ripping it back fully with a long snap of his right arm, and the lawn mower roared to life in his hands.

The garage’s fire door swung open, and Beth and Jerry looked at the two of them in surprise. Rick released the handle and the heavy thrum of the engine died back down. He reached a hand down to help Morty up off his knees, and smiled at him as he said, “Good job, Morty.”

“Dad?” Beth asked, tone one of disbelief as she glanced between her father, her son, and the lawn mower she had just been resigned to replacing. “Did you and Morty fix that thing?”

“Yeah, I saw Jerry struggling to crank it and thought I’d take a look at it with Morty,” he ruffled Morty’s hair and told her with pride, “He worked with me to get it running. He’s a good little helper.”

Beth clasped her hands in front of her chest, tears filling her eyes. “Oh, dad. That’s wonderful.” 

Jerry glared at Rick over her shoulder and looked like he’d just been force fed thumbtacks. Rick shot him a lazy smirk, pulling Morty into his side by his shoulder. “He’s got a lot to learn, but he’s definitely got a special mind. He’s - with me, he’s gonna accomplish great things, Beth.” 

A couple tears slid down Beth’s face, and she gently thumbed them away. “I’m sorry, that just - makes me so happy. I’m so glad you two are getting along.”

Jerry scowled and tossed his hands out and walked away, muttering bitterly to himself. Morty watched him go, and looked between his crying mother and his smug grandfather, and had the crystal clear thought that all the adults in his life were extremely fucked up.

Beth gave her dad a watery smile, and said, “Thank you for fixing the lawn mower, dad, and thank you for doing it with Morty. I better go put a bandaid on Jerry’s ego, but I hope you two keep on doing things like this together.” 

She shut the fire door, and Morty stared at it in puzzlement. “Rick?”

“Yeah, Morty?”

“Did you just do this to be mean to my dad?”

“Nah, Morty,” Rick’s arm was heavy across his shoulders. “I did it to spend a little time with you.”

Rick’s hands were glistening with gas, and his eyes were bright from huffing toluene. He hugged Morty against his side for a second before adding with an incidental shrug, “Pissing Jerry off was just a bonus.”

He let Morty go and bent down to pick up his tools, and Morty knocked his knuckles together nervously. “Then… did you really mean what you j-just said to mom a-a-about me?”

Rick tossed his tools back in their box. He didn’t look at him as he said, “Of course I did. You’re gonna stick with me, and we’re gonna do all kinds of wonderful things, Morty.”

Morty flushed, his heart picking up its pace in its cage. He took no notice of the fact that his agreement was a foregone conclusion. _‘Good job, Morty,’_ echoed in his head, and his arms began to open as Rick shut his toolbox, and he said, “Well… okay, Rick.”

…

“Don’t get lost, Morty. These Obravadeans will do way worse than slaughter and eat you if they catch you alone.”

Morty stood next to Rick on the neon purple travelator, anxiously taking in the extraterrestrial exhibits they were slowly passing by. Thick glass walls separated them from perpetual motion machines, miniature asteroid gardens and ghostsmoke advertisements for affordable assassinations. “Wh-what’s worse than that?”

“They’ll put you in a little sweater that says _My Owner is Single_ and feed you nothing but chocolate cake until you die of malnourishment.”

Morty’s eyes went wide, and he huddled closer to his grandfather. The aliens behind them eyed him curiously, Koosh ball skin pulsing in a rainbow of patterns like cuttlefish, and Morty grabbed onto the edge of Rick’s lab coat uneasily. They passed a room containing a weather display, a microcosm of climate flickering through sun and storm and snow. He stared at it in fascination as he asked, “What are we here for, Rick?” 

“For my sci- _uurgh_ -my science, Morty.” 

Morty rolled his eyes and sighed. “Would it kill you to be a little more specific?” 

“Some-sometimes, now look alive. Here it comes.” 

The travelator curved to the left ahead of them, revealing a large cylindrical glass tube that ran the full height of the museum, extending from the floor fifty feet beneath them all the way up to the vaulted ceiling. Suspended inside were at least a dozen different types of metals, cobalt and nickel and titanium, iron and chromium and bismuth, all massive and unrefined and sparking with chaotic energy. 

“You see that, Morty? There’s a-a fucking _magnet ram_ under this cathode. Nothing can make a stronger solenoid in the _entire universe_ , Morty.”

“Oh,” Morty said, watching the arcs of electricity flare and flash against the inside of the giant tube. He still didn’t understand why Rick had dragged him here. “Um… neat?”

Rick was unphased by his lack of enthusiasm. He dug through his pockets as he casually explained, “We’re gonna steal it, Morty.”

“ _What?_ ” Morty glanced around furtively, but no one had heard Rick. His heart started to pound and he tugged on Rick’s lab coat as he whispered, “R-Rick, that’s - that’s _illegal_.”

Rick produced a three pronged remote and pointed it at the magnetic display. “Only if you think about it, Morty, now shut up and follow my lead.” 

Rick flipped a switch on the remote, and absolute pandemonium ensued. 

The hunks of metal crashed fifteen meters to ground level, shattering their glass confines and sending shockwaves through the building that rocked the travelator under their feet. Terrified screams filled the gallery, one of which was Morty’s, and he clung to his grandfather’s side as sprinklers rained down thick, meringue-like foam to coat the floor and walls. “Rick, what the - _what the hell!_ ” 

“C’mon, Morty, while everyone’s distracted!” Rick snatched him up about the waist and jumped over the railing, and Morty clung to him, shrieking as they hurtled to the ground. He braced for an impact he was sure would break every bone in his body, his eyes pinched shut, his muscles pulled well past their limits; he waited for a crash that didn't come. 

“You're fine, Morty, you can - _heh_ , you can let go now,” Rick said, struggling to hold back a rascally snicker at his grandson's cringing terror. Morty opened his eyes, and saw they’d sunk safely into the foam pouring from the sprinkler system. He pried himself from around Rick and breathed out shakily, sure he’d just had ten years shaved off his life.

He yanked his feet from the coagulating mousse clinging to his shins and waded his way after Rick, who was heel hooking his way down the effervescent material into the room beneath the cathode he’d just shattered. He was incredibly spry for his age, flexible and surefooted and fast. Morty had trouble keeping up with him, and scrambled down the sticky waterfall of foam while calling out, “Wait - hold up, Rick, you’re- you're going too - hey, slow down!”

Rick didn’t slow down. He landed in what Morty guessed was the basement and spared a second to grab Morty's foot and pull him the last eight feet to the floor. 

“Whoa - ah, hey!” Morty shouted at him, but Rick just caught him by his arm before he hit the ground and pulled him upright next to him. He spoke quickly, saying, “There it is, Morty. We’ve got two minutes before the laser turrets come back online and security is on our ass, Morty! We gotta hurry!” 

Morty darted his eyes about the room, unable to make visual sense of anything. Rick wrapped an arm around him to snatch up his chin and force him to focus on the structure in the back of the room. It was a huge levitating casket of churning gears and sleek, ferrous plates, over twice his height and surrounded by a field of electromagnetic activity. Rick slapped a black disk in his hands and shoved him forward. 

“Attach this portal amplifier to it while I program my gun!”

“ _W-w-what?_ ”

Alarms began blaring, a deafening wheal that drowned out the screams of the museum’s patrons and the hiss of the sprinkler system. He stumbled and looked back at Rick, who was fiddling with his portal gun with a turnscrew, popping open a panel on its side to transpose wires. Morty’s heart was slamming against his throat, choking him with adrenaline. Rick looked up at him urgently and shouted, “Go, go, go, Morty!”

Morty faltered backwards a couple steps before flipping around into a full tilt run across the basement. He edged the foam pouring in from the hole they’d just entered through, filling the center of the room, around to the magnet ram. He came to a stop before it, its field of energy causing his hair to stand on end and his body to feel ten pounds lighter. Clutching the disk Rick had given him, he heard his grandfather yell, “Under it! Right in the middle!” 

Morty did _not_ want to crawl under the three foot gap between the magnetic machine and the floor, but he saw no choice. The sirens increased in volume, and blood pounded in his ears, and his body was numb with the urge to run, but there was nowhere to run down here. He dropped prone and army crawled beneath the ram, doing as Rick said because there was no other option. 

He got to the center and twisted onto his back. The disk had green, curling tendrils, the same color and consistency as the portals Rick created; as soon as he touched it to the underside of the device it used them to cling to it. He started to try to shimmy his way back out as quickly as possible, but before he could even make it halfway the tendrils expanded into a full portal just above him, wide as a car was long. It crackled and whirred and climbed vertically, swallowing the magnet ram in less than ten seconds before closing into nothing, leaving him to breathe heavily and stare at the cracked ceiling in confusion.

“Morty, Morty, Morty, c’mon, get up, w-w-we gotta get the fuck outta here!” Rick came into view above him, expression one of harrow and hustle. He hoisted Morty up and shot open a portal, but before they could jump through a barrage a laser fire rained down on them and Rick threw him back to the ground. Morty cowered behind his grandfather, just able to make out the forms of aliens in blue fatigues on the ground level aiming guns at them. They screeched at each other in a language that sounded like a cross between barking chihuahuas and crinkling plastic bags, clear orders to capture or kill them. 

Rick’s arm opened up like an exploded view drawing into some sort of weapon. He fired back on their assailants, arcs of plasma that pitched at breakneck speed toward their targets. His aim was true, catching one of the aliens in the shoulder, another in the side of the head, severing half its skull from its body. It fell down into the hole, landing on the rising foam with a soft _splat_ , and its thrashing body was the last thing Morty saw before Rick pulled him through the portal. 

They landed safely on top of the magnet ram in their front yard. Rick grinned, his arm back to normal, and shook him with an all-conquering exclamation of, “ _We did it, baby!_ ” 

Morty’s mind was a little storm in a teacup. He went limp in Rick’s hands with shock, struggling to fit the last ten minutes of his life into something that made narrative sense. Rick was _exhilarated_ , untroubled by the crimes he’d just committed, and Morty - Morty could only think that he’d never seen a dead body before. 

“You killed that guy,” he whispered. 

Rick’s grin slowly faded, his brow creasing in vexation. “Only because he was trying to kill us, Morty.” 

He. It was a he. Morty went green and covered his mouth. 

Rick looked at him like his distress was ridiculous, shaking his head in disappointment. He hopped off the magnet ram and turned around, holding his arms up to help Morty down after him. When his grandson hesitated, he frowned and flicked his fingers towards himself, snapping impatiently, “C’mere, Morty.” 

Morty bit his lip. He really didn’t want to, but he set his hands on Rick’s shoulders and let him grab him by his waist to lower him to the driveway, and for a moment, Morty felt weightless in his arms. He was hit all at once with the realization that he was a tiny, fragile little thing; that his body was frangible and his life was finite and his grandfather was a very, _very_ frightening man.

Rick set him down, considering him carefully. His hands lingered on him, and they were so warm with the thrill of grand larceny and murder that they made Morty shiver in the beautiful spring sun. Morty stared at their feet, and Rick’s frown deepened, but he said nothing. 

The front door opened, and Rick let him go as he glanced over at it. Morty stumbled backwards a step and sighed out shakily, relief bleeding the tension from his exhausted muscles. Rick’s attention was heavy as heroin, and he knew he needed to get out of the center of it immediately.

His parents and sister walked out to see what all the commotion was about. Beth looked mildly concerned, Jerry looked ready to blow a gasket, and Summer was taking pictures with her phone and saying sarcastically to herself, “Oh yeah, this is real conducive to a healthy upbringing. Nothing out of the ordinary here that could make people think we’re a bunch of freaks to steer clear of.”

Jerry waved his arms at the storey of floating metal filling his front yard, shouting, “What will the Homeowners Association think of this? Beth!”

Beth just looked at her dad for an explanation, open and ready to listen. “What's going on, dad?”

Rick walked over to his daughter to give her a quick hug and peck on the cheek. After that, it was obvious that no matter what he said, she’d be fine with it. He smiled at her as he lied through his teeth, “One of my research sponsors donated this to me. It’s r-really - essential to my lodestone experiments. I only need it for a couple days, then it’s gone, I promise, sweetie.”

Morty watched his mom accept this answer with only a cursory request for a little warning next time, his head a dizzy bundle of nerves clamoring for a breakdown. Rick elevated lying to an artform, did it just as skillfully as anything else he set his mind to doing, and Morty felt sick to his stomach. He needed to lay down. He needed some space. 

He needed to get away from his grandfather. 

As Rick was spinning a story about some nameless benefactor that had graciously given him this expensive piece of technology, Morty silently slid into the house and up to his bedroom. He hid under his covers, and he tried not to think about disintegrated bones and dashed brain matter and how easy it was to die, and he didn’t come back down until dinner. 

Whoever said crime was a young man’s game had never met his grandpa. 

…

Morty avoided Rick for as long as he could. He stayed out of the garage and made up reasons to excuse himself from dinner, left the living room as soon as Rick walked in and only came back in when he left. He wasn't exactly subtle about it, his body language bright and bold so he never had to say anything out loud. _Leave me alone, don’t come near me, don’t talk to me._

Rick allowed it for three days.

Morty went to bed early that night. Everyone was watching _The Bachelor_ and he wasn’t interested in who did or didn't get a rose, so he climbed the stairs without a goodnight and had his teeth brushed and pajamas on by half past eight. He was sound asleep when Rick slammed his door open a few hours later. 

“Ah! Rick - Rick - w-what's going - what’re you - ?”

“Shh, shh, _shhhhut_ the fuck up, Morty - be quiet, Morty, you’ll wake - hey, hey, hey. Easy there, you little character - part-partner in crime - hero in the field - little guy. Be cool, okay, Morty? Chill out for grandpa.”

Morty didn’t even have to be one quarter of the way awake to tell Rick was _hammered_. His grandfather could barely stand up straight, swaying like a scarecrow in a squall and backlit by the partial light from the hallway. Morty sat up and brought his knees to his chest as Rick sat down on the edge of his bed, slumping over to pat his hair with liquorish affection. Morty flinched down, but didn’t try to push him away. 

“Oh, jeez, what’re you doing, Rick?”

“I’m - I’m -” Rick hiccuped and laughed into the bed beside him for a second before he started pulling the covers off of him, “- I’m taking you out for a r-ride, Morty, c’mon, let’s go get some food or something.”

“I - hey! I don’t wanna go - _stop it, quit it_ \- go for a ride, Rick!”

“C’mon, you’ll - it’ll be _awesome_ , Morty, and I’m fucking starving.” Rick pulled him from his bed by his foot, and Morty shouted as he hit the floor.

“Jesus, Rick! I’m tired, I’ve got - got school tomorrow - I don’t wanna -”

Rick plucked him up about his middle like a duffle bag and carried him out the door, stumbling and slurring and sneering the whole way, “ _Fuck school_ , Morty, it’s a goddamn - greasy kids crammed in like sardines, teachers can’t be paid to give a fuck, squawking like a cage full of par _-uugh-_ rots repeating shit from back-backwards ass textbooks like - it’s - it’s called open source learning software and it’s fucking _free_. School’s a cesspool, Morty, now shut up. You’re - you’re frustrating me. I’m too hungry for this shit.”

Morty hung upside down from his grandfather’s arm, staring at the floor in astonishment as he went headrush red. He was having trouble processing that this was apparently a part of his life now; his wasted grandfather could wake him up in the middle of the night to go on a food run while belittling the public education system and all its many shortcomings, and that was - well, that was just a thing that happened now. He crossed his arms and huffed loudly. 

“I _like_ school, Rick.” 

“Oooh, there’s a shocker,” Rick rolled his eyes, but he was too drunk to coordinate disdainful body language with carrying a hundred pounds of dead weight and had to lean against the hallway wall for balance. “Why don’t you marry it, since you - you love it so much, Morty, jeez.”

Morty slapped a hand over his face. “That doesn’t make any sense, Rick.”

“You don’t make any sense, you whiny little - punk ass crybaby - stupid school-loving - uugh, _fuck_ , w-who put stairs here? This is just - shoddy - shitty arts and crafts right here. Dumbass vertical nonsense.”

“Rick, set me - just let me down and I’ll walk.”

Rick gripped the railing to steady himself, eyeing the staircase as one would a particularly difficult ski slope, and Morty almost laughed. It was hard to be scared of someone who had to psych himself up to navigate stairs. His grandfather held him tight and started down the steps, saying, “Nah, I think I’ll hold onto you, Morty. Got an adventure to go on. Important shit, need - need your help.”

“To hit up _McDonald’s?_ ”

“Morty, I haven’t been to McDonald’s since before you were born. We’re going to -” he hiccuped again and said with a flourish, “- _Space McDonald’s_.”

Morty groaned. Rick lurched to the side and Morty’s stomach floundered in anticipatory fear of flipping ass over teakettle, and he clenched a hand up in Rick’s lapel as he suggested cholerically, “Oh, my god, Rick, wh-why don’t you just - just open a portal?” 

Rick stopped. He looked down at him with a vacant expression, thinking this over for a second before he said with comical earnestness, “Damn, Morty. That’s - fuck. That’s a good idea.” 

Morty rolled his eyes at the smartest man in the universe, resigning himself to wakefulness for however long Rick demanded his company. His grandfather shot open a portal in the stairwell and suitcased him through, stepping out into the garage. Morty blinked, about to ask what they were doing here, but then he saw why.

“Is that a spaceship?”

“Yep.”

Rick set him down and pulled him over to the metallic mess in the middle of the garage. It looked like a piece of scrap metal art, corrugated tin roof panels and repurposed car body components soldered together into a spacefaring vessel. Morty stared at it.

“Can it fly?”

Rick snorted. “‘Course it can. I built it. Now hop in, Morty.”

Morty tried to take a step back, because the headlights were literally duct taped onto the bonnet, but Rick opened the passenger door with a screechy _clank_ and hoisted him in with an arm under his thighs and around his shoulders. He slammed the door shut on him and Morty flinched back into the brown leather bucket seat. His heart began buffeting blood through his sleepy body as he watched his grandfather topple over to the driver’s side door. 

Rick got behind the wheel, and he asked nervously, “Is it - is it s-safe for you to drive, Rick?”

Rick ignored his grandson’s concern, adjusting his seat fussily as he grumbled to himself, “Goddamn it’s hard to get this - fuck, never e-enough leg room, even when I build it myself, _ugh_. Fucking ninty-ninth percentile bullshit.”

When he was satisfied with the position of his seat, or as satisfied as he could be with legs as long as his, he got his keys from his lab coat pocket and pressed the garage door fob on them before cranking up the spaceship. Morty frantically looked for a seatbelt, wrenching it over himself and struggling to fasten it with clumsy, frightened hands.

“Hey, hey, you’re - stop yanking it -” Rick grabbed the seatbelt from him and let it retract a foot before slowly pulling it back across him, “- you’re triggering the force _-eurrgh-_ force lockup in-in-in the assembly, Morty, chill out already.”

He clicked the tongue into its buckle for him and started backing up out of the garage. He didn’t bother with his own seatbelt. 

Morty had only been in the air once before, when he went to visit his father’s parents on the East Coast. That had been years ago, half a lifetime ago, the winter break after he turned six. All he remembered from that trip now was the friction between his mom and dad over how to handle his fear of flying for the first time. His dad had wanted to let him bring a stuffed animal to soothe him, but his mom had vetoed that idea, insisting it would only more deeply ingrain his insecurities. 

Morty didn’t know much about parenting styles and their psychological effects on children, but he could say for sure that having to leave Arthur the Aardvark behind hadn’t made him more confident about flying. 

After a few rattles and dips that had Morty whiteknuckling the _oh, shit_ handle, Rick had the ship in the air, climbing quickly through the layers of the atmosphere. Morty couldn’t decide if it was better to keep his eyes wide open or pinched shut, so he alternated between both as they ascended into outer space. By the time they were past the exosphere, he was pretty sure he was having a nightmare, so he started begging himself to wake up. 

“Oh, you-you’re awake, M-Morty,” Rick assured him, and Morty realized he’d been whispering his pleas out loud. “You’re up higher than the International Space Station, now.”

Morty squeaked. 

“If-if-if you opened the door right now, the ca-cabin would depress _-uugh-_ urize and all the oxygen would be ripped from our lungs so violently they’d collapse in on themselves,” Rick looked down on the shrinking blue marble that was their home planet as he finished flippantly, “and then we’d die.” 

“Oh, jeez, Rick. That’s - I mean, couldn’t we just get some fast food on Earth?”

“Earth doesn’t accept blemflarks and the current rate of exchange is fuck-fucking highway robbery, Morty.”

Morty looked down at Earth, at the vast blackness pressing in on it from all around. He could cup it in his hand, and then he could pinch it between his thumb and forefinger, and then he couldn’t see it anymore. That awful, aching feeling of insignificance subsumed his heart once again, and he brought his knees up to his chin. 

“Does the radio work?” he asked quietly. 

Rick flicked it on for him, and he fiddled with the tuner to distract himself from the crushing existential nihilism threatening his adolescent sense of self. 

_“Everybody’s gotta live, and everybody’s gonna die. Everybody’s gotta live. I think you know the reason why.”_

Morty sat back and listened. The gentle progression of the guitar chords was soothing, the conviviality between the lead singer and the backup vocalists hopeful despite the lyrics. He bobbed his head softly and thought about people making music together instead of how lonely the vacuum of interplanetary space was. 

_“Sometimes the going gets so good. Then again it gets pretty rough. But when I have you in my arms, baby, you know I just can’t, I just can’t get enough.”_

When the song faded out and a commercial started running for something called a plumbus, Morty turned the volume down. He looked at the stars passing them by, and wondered how fast they were going. He knew Rick had figured out faster than light travel, but was in the dark about what exactly that meant. 

Rick snapped his fingers as he said to no one in particular, “Love!” 

His tone was sharp with the relief of recall, and Morty glanced over at him. “What?”

“That song. It was by a band called Love. It came out in - s-sometime in the seventies. Before your mom was born. Took me a minute to re-remember.”

“Oh.” Morty lowered his legs a little. “It-it was nice. I liked it.”

“Yeah,” Rick agreed, focusing on his flightpath. “It’s cute.” 

Morty let his legs slip back down to the floorboard, his arms opening back up. The air in the cabin was rich and warm, smelling of ozone and old cars and expired orange air freshener. It wasn’t so bad. Even though he was three sheets to the wind, Rick was actually a decent pilot; sober, he’d probably tailslide around Blue Angels.

“Where did you, um, learn to fly?”

“I taught myself, Morty.”

“Oh.” Morty rubbed the back of his neck and looked down at his feet, pigeon-toeing them together. 

Of course he did. 

Before long, they flew up on an asteroid that had been horizontally cleaved in two to create a platform for a restaurant. Neon signs made bold declarations about delicacies such as Scarlog Poppies and Baby Boozles; they had the best, the cheapest, and concerningly, the most ferocious. Rick docked at the drive-through menu and rolled his window down to order, at which Morty shrieked and clutched his hands over his mouth. 

Rick looked at him in bafflement, before realization sparked in his bottom-of-the-bottle blue eyes and he snickered, beside himself with amusement at his grandson’s primordial fear of suffocation. “There’s an - _haha_ \- Annunaki generator here. It’s - _heh_ \- it’s terra-terraformed, Morty. You can breathe.” 

Morty breathed out and back in experimentally. He glared at his grandfather. “That’s _not funny_ , Rick.” 

“It kinda is, Morty,” Rick said, doubling over against the steering wheel as he laughed drunkenly to himself. “You thought - jeez, the _look_ on your little face, Morty, oh, my god.”

Morty crossed his arms and looked out the passenger side window. “Y-you’ve got a real sick sense of humor, you know that?”

Rick shrugged. “Beats having no sense of humor, Morty. You really - really gotta learn how to lighten up, Captain Killjoy.” 

“Jesus, Rick, I am not - !”

“Hello, thank you for choosing Miss Donerello’s. May I take your order, please?” 

Morty seethed while Rick rattled off an incomprehensible order involving baghaar and spatchcocking. The service rep read the order back to him to make sure it was correct; he agreed and she told him the price and to pull up to the second window, thanking him again for his patronage. 

As they waited, Morty thought about his family. He wondered if they’d notice that he was gone. He realized they probably wouldn’t, and even if they did, they’d just assume he was out with Rick, because he was, and no one would be overly concerned. He hugged himself tighter, and suddenly, he didn’t know if returning home would be as comforting as he hoped it would be.

A white paper bag and holographic currency traded hands, or tentacles, and Rick checked to make sure he had everything he asked for before he rolled his window back up and flew off into the emptiness of space. Morty watched the little asteroid fade from sight in the rearview mirror, its neon signs twinkling into nothing in the dark, and tears blurred his vision. All at once, he felt lonely and tired and painfully unloved, and he covered his face with his hands. 

“Whoa, whoa, Morty!” Rick said, swerving a little when his grandson started sobbing in the passenger seat. “I - jeez, I got some for you, too, calm down!”

“I - I’m not hungry,” Morty said, crying harder.

“Not even for a milkshake?”

“Oh, my god, a-are you freaking - a m-milkshake won’t fix this, Rick!”

“Oh, damn.” Rick gave this some serious consideration, before concluding gravely, “That’s pretty bad, Morty.”

Morty laughed despite himself, emotions running so high wires were getting crossed in his limbic system. He giggled unhappily between soprano sobs, tears splashing across his face and down his chin, the interior lights playing over his skin warm and wet and waning. Rick just stared down at him ponderously, and Morty shot back sharp and shaky, “Y-yeah, Rick. You are.” 

Rick set down the bag of food between them and said nothing. It smelled of grease and gristle, pungent and not unlike pepperoni. It made Morty’s stomach turn, and he went on, “You’re always making fun of me, and - and you’re _really scary_ sometimes, Rick. You’re so, _so_ mean, and I - and I don’t -” Morty swallowed hard, shaking under the weight of genuine confrontation, “- _I_ _don’t like you_. I don’t wanna be out here with you. I wish you’d - god, I just w-w-want you to leave me _alone_ , Rick.”

Rick’s jaw went tight, metacarpals bowing up brutally beneath skin thin with age, and for a terrible second, Morty thought he might slap him. He didn’t, though. He looked out the windshield and asked, “You done?”

Morty sniffled and nodded, curling back into himself. 

“Alright, then. I gotta place I wanna show you.” 

They flew in silence for half an hour. Morty didn’t risk touching the radio; he could tell Rick would just turn it back off if he did. It was uncomfortable and the odor of fast food made it more so, trenchant and salty with a strong basenote of blackened fatback. The cabin was too small to hold both the smell and the lingering echo of Morty's enmity, and he was desperate for some fresh air. For all that he insisted that he was starving, Rick didn’t touch the food, and Morty breathed in shallow discomfort until they arrived at their next destination. 

Eventually, a planet came into view, predominantly green and generously threaded through with yellow. Ramous rivers colored with loess sediment striated its surface. It looked to be an oceanless world, made up of one massive, emerald continent marbleized with dense, dull gold. 

Rick landed the ship atop the edge of a lemony tableland studded with slender, larch-like trees. Here, the sun was rising, a red dwarf that cast the valley beneath them in midsummer strawberry shades. Towering succulents stretched fleshy appendages towards the sky, wrapped in flowering vines from sturdy root to shivering branch. They looked like sunflowers, but they shifted through a series of colors, white to yellow to orange, red to burgundy to brown and back again, repeating in pulsing waves from the base to the tip of each vine. 

“Oh,” he said, leaning forward in his seat. He wiped at the dried salt on his face and said again, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Rick said, watching him too carefully for someone so inebriated. “I thought you might like it, Morty.”

Morty stared at the tens of thousands of fluid flowers phasing through dozens of different shades throughout the valley, and he whispered, “It’s unreal.”

Rick finally grabbed his greasy bag of food and started rummaging around in it. “Nope, definitely real. It’s just - it’s got to do with the pH of the soil here. You like flowers, huh?”

Morty flushed, but couldn’t look away from them. Rick unwrapped a sandwich of unknown origin and took a bite, singsonging sloppily through his mouthful of food, “ _Gaaay_.”

Morty jerked back and glared at him, ready to demand to go home immediately, but Rick put a hand up to stop him while he chewed and swallowed, saying once he did, “It’s fine. It’s kinda cute. You’re cute, Morty.”

Morty went stiff, flush travelling down the back of his neck. No one had ever called him cute before, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it. Rick took another bite of his sandwich and went on, “That flower you helped me get made the glue that’s holding this ship together, Morty. The magnet is why - it’s the only reason it can break outta Earth’s atmosphere. I-I-I couldn’t have built this w-without you, Morty. You’re why we’re here.”

“Oh,” Morty said, a tender little sound. He looked from the flowers to Rick and back again, clutching at his shirt anxiously. “Um, well, y-you’re welcome, but - but I - I still don’t think -”

“What, y-y-you don’t think you should be out here with me, Morty?” Rick finished his sandwich and wiped his fingers on his khakis even though there were napkins in the bag of fast food. “You want me to just leave you alone?”

Morty said nothing, and Rick reached over to run a hand through his hair as he said, “Everyone’s left you alone, Morty. I’m not going to.”

Morty froze. He opened his mouth to deny Rick’s claim, but his heart seized up cold when he realized he couldn’t. Rick extended one of his curls and let it bounce back into shape, and Morty said quietly, “I d-don’t like it when you - when you touch my hair, Rick.”

Rick kept doing it. “I like your curls. They’re cute, too.”

Morty pouted, but didn't duck away, and said, “I don’t think I w-wanna be cute.”

Rick chuckled and tousled his hair before grabbing another sandwich. “Better not hold your breath on that one, Morty.”

Rick continued to eat, and Morty watched the flowers flutter like candle flames caught up in the draft of a cracked window, and he didn’t know what to say. He felt at once hurt and soothed, a subdued ache signing a lease for his chest and settling in for the foreseeable future. There was something both distressing and comforting about someone that wouldn’t leave you even if you asked them to; even if you pushed them away, you never had to be alone. 

For someone that had been alone as much as Morty had already been in his short life, that didn’t seem like the worst thing that could happen to him. 

“You, um… you r-really found this place, and thought of me?”

Rick nodded as if that were self-evident, taking a sip of his drink. “‘Course, Morty. I’m always thinking of you.”

“Oh,” Morty whispered, because that hurt to hear, but in a way that made him want to hear it again. “W-why are you so - so mean to me, then?”

Rick shrugged and didn’t even think about it for half a second. “Because I’m a bully and you’re really, really funny to pick on, M-Morty.” 

Morty’s jaw dropped and he folded his arms firmly across his chest, glowering at his grandfather with end-of-the-rope exasperation. “ _Jesus_ , Rick, those are terr-terrible - awful - _really bad reasons_.”

Rick kept eating, unphased. “I don’t need to have good reasons. The only _good_ _reason_ in the entire universe to do anything ever is because I feel like it. I wanna build a spaceship out of a brokedown Buick; I do it. I wanna eat spicy Baby Boozles on Procklim’s third moon; I do it. I wanna drag my whiny little bitch grandson along with me; I do it.”

“Rick! I am not - that’s - stop calling me names!”

Rick cackled, unashamedly amused. “Yeah, use - _heh_ \- use that tone. That’ll make me stop f-for sure.”

Morty frowned, clutching his elbows tight against himself. “Take me home, Rick.”

“Aww, c’mon, you big baby. I'm just - just teasing.” Rick set down his food and drink, much less drunk than he’d been when he’d first barged into Morty’s room. He threw his arm around his grandson’s shoulders, not bothering to wipe off his hands this time, and pulled him closer. “Tell you - I’ll tell you what. If it makes you happy, I’ll ease up with the name calling.”

Morty eyed him suspiciously, holding his body taut against his grandfather's side, and asked, “... you promise?”

Rick raised his free hand with a smirk, saying, “I promise, sweetie.”

Morty blushed. He didn’t know how he felt about that. It wasn’t a bad name, but it didn’t exactly feel good, either. It was definitely better than little bitch, though, so he nodded in acceptance. Rick stared down at him for a long while, long enough for Morty’s heart to start to beat a bit faster, for his skin to begin prickling with some unfamiliar electricity, before he let him go and looked back into the valley of changeable sunflowers.

“I really do need you, Morty,” he said, his sobriety somehow more unsettling than his inebriation. “Gimme another chance, okay?”

Morty watched his face, trying to make sense of him. He didn’t seem to be joking; in fact, this was the most serious Morty had ever seen him. He thought of how it felt to be told _‘thatta boy’_ and _‘good job’_ and _‘I’m always thinking of you.’_ He let his arms drop back into his lap.

“... okay, Rick.”

What was any relationship but an ongoing chain of reciprocal concessions? Rick was making an effort. It was only fair that he accepted that he was trying, and did the same in return.

No one back on Earth missed him. The only person that wanted to spend time with him was sitting right next to him. How could he refuse his grandfather’s attempt to pour oil over troubled waters?

He couldn’t.

He really couldn’t. 

“Okay,” he said again, and Rick smiled at him. A real smile, honest and warm and inviting. He couldn’t help but smile back, a bright little mirror in a dark little room, throwing back whatever leftover light was cast his way. 

He never really had any other choice. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gift art from the wonderful @innstitches! Thank you so much, I can't believe how amazing you are :) 
> 
> The songs mentioned in this chapter are _Esta niña linda,_ or _This Pretty Girl,_ a Spanish lullaby (translation: This pretty little girl, who was born during the night, wants to be taken, out for a ride), and _Everybody's Gotta Live_ by Love. 
> 
> So, I thought I had the timeline a bit different than the show, but a lovely person informed me that I don't given a clip from Morty's Mind Blowers, so whoo! Rick totes showed up when Morty was 12, so here we are, amidst a morally starved slowburn sea of subtlety and symbolism. 
> 
> Also Morty has red hair because I say so and I really think he should in the show but whatever. 
> 
> Anyways, nothing R-rated yet, but this is the story of the first time, if all the flower metaphors weren't on the nose enough. It'll get there, just gotta give me some time to lay down the foundations of abuse. This requires some structure and planning, but given the other two stories, we all know where it eventually ends up. Patience is key. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! 
> 
> Signing off,
> 
> firstbornking


	2. April

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: brief mention of child murder; brief mention of sexually motivated torture; brief mention of animal torture.

Morty was actually quite good at checkers.

Rick laid on his side on the couch, sipping on a Blue Moon and half paying attention to the game on the coffee table as he watched a rerun of some reality show. His head rested on his palm, eyes starred and spangled as he took his Saturday afternoon buzz maintenance seriously. Morty sat criss-cross applesauce on the living room floor facing him and their game of checkers, focused on the positions of his pieces where his grandfather wasn’t. He set up an A-line pyramid formation, and Rick lazily clopped a black checker against the board's edge in return. It was clearly a bad move, failing to respond to Morty’s attempt to control the center of the board. He blinked down at it.

“Huh.” 

He captured one of Rick’s pieces and pinned another, and Rick finally looked down at him. Morty could tell the moment he actually gave the game his full attention, finishing his beer in a long, cool swallow and clinking the bottle down on top of the coffee table. He sat up with a sigh, interlocking his fingers between his splayed knees as a sharpness entered his eyes for the first time all day. 

“How long’ve you been playing this, Morty?” he asked, breaking off his grandson’s offensive line and stymying his triple jump setup. 

Morty stared at the board, thinking about his next best move. He shrugged as he pitched a piece forward, sacrificing it to open up a weak B-line diagonal in a bid for the king row. “Dad taught me a-a couple years ago, but I blocked him in one time, and he, um, he stopped playing with me after that. I haven’t really played that much.”

Rick rolled his eyes in disgust, accepting Morty’s sacrificial play. “Fucking pathetic.” 

Morty pushed down the other half of the B-line Rick’s move had opened up, and found that in this specific instance, he didn’t disagree with his grandfather’s disdain. His dad refusing to play with him again because he didn’t know blockading was a viable strategy had hurt his feelings. He’d been punished with disengagement for being good at something, and even at ten years old he’d known that wasn’t fair. He nodded, saying quietly, “He can be a bit of a sore loser.”

“Well, I can be, too,” Rick said, blocking Morty's advancing piece and swiftly setting up a Chicago trap, forcing Morty onto the defensive, “but I’d never stop playing with you because of it, sweetie.”

Morty flushed and lowered his eyes, rubbing the back of his neck and shifting his legs beneath himself to sit side-saddle. He still didn’t know how to respond to his grandfather’s pet name for him; on the one hand, it was preferable to his insults by a mile, but on the other, it made his stomach cartwheel and his heart cant sideways and his skin color itself a candid shade of crimson. He had to move one of his checkers from the back row to avoid getting pinned, and he sprung the trap. Rick skipped a black checker into the vacated spot immediately. 

“King me, baby,” Rick said, smirking down at him, and somehow, Morty still felt like he was being picked on.

Rick watched him as he crowned his piece, bacchic and bright, and Morty resisted the urge to squirm beneath his stare. He wondered if this was what butterflies pinned to spreading boards felt like, preserved and put on display for the pleasure of something much bigger than themselves for reasons they couldn’t possibly understand. He stayed on the defensive until the end, where it became clear he couldn’t win with Rick actually paying attention to him.

It wasn't really that uncommon of a thing to say in checkers, was it? We did it, baby; I'm back, baby; that's the ticket, baby. It was just a thing he said, a turn of phrase, an interjection like his silly catchphrases and surly curses. He ignored the amusement in Rick's eyes and accepted his defeat. 

“You win, Rick. Th-thank you, uhm, thank you for playing with me,” he said, because where his father was a sore loser, he knew it wasn’t about winning or losing; what was important was getting invited back to play again. Rick reclined against the backrest and gave him a small smile. 

“You’re actually not bad, Morty. This is a solved game, though, so the best you could ever do against anyone that really knows how to play is draw.”

Morty started setting the board back to the standard opening position, but with black on his side this time. “Solved?”

Rick nodded. “Just means the _-eurgh-_ the ideal strategy’s been mathematically proven. A computer program running an algorithm for-for optimal play can never lose.”

Morty thought about this for a moment, looking at the rows of checkers. “But people don’t think like computer programs.”

“No,” Rick agreed, watching him absentmindedly grab his ankle and lean on his opposite hand, lightly stretching his core and opening his shoulders over the floor. “We don't.”

Morty extended his legs all the way under the coffee table, working the stiffness out of them, and he glanced up at Rick to ask, “So, someone found out the best way to play every time, and taught a computer how to do it, and now no - no one can beat that computer?”

Rick nodded, resting his elbow on his knee and propping his chin in his hand. His eyes were weighted with wheat ale, Belgian white balm in his blood. Morty preferred this type of intoxication, loose and laidback instead of manic and unmanageable. It was nice. Compared to the shenanigans Rick dragged him into when he was brutally tanked, this was downright tranquil. 

“Doesn’t that kinda miss the point of what’s fun about playing?”

“And what’s the point - what’s fun about playing, Morty?” Rick asked, lazy and engaged and easygoing. Morty sat back on his toes as he opened the board with the Single Corner play. 

“Setting up a-a puzzle for another person, right? To see what they’ll do? Because - well, you can’t really solve for people, c-can you? We don’t make sense like that.” 

Rick’s chin sunk deeper into his hand, regarding Morty with an open fondness that was becoming more common by the day. “You’ll lose again.”

Morty looked down, cheeks going bubblegum pink under his grandfather’s gaze. “I-I know, but - well - you’re not a computer, Rick. I-I-I could win if I keep trying. You -” he gestured to the board with a small sweep of his hand, “- I mean, you actually had to pay attention this time.”

Rick conceded this point by grabbing the remote and muting the television behind him with a chuckle. “You got me there, Morty.” 

“So, y-you’ll play with me again?” Morty asked, hesitant with hope, a little hush of happiness. Rick considered him, eyes hooded and warm enough to make Morty think about turning up the air conditioning a little, before he nodded slowly in agreement. 

“Of course I will, Morty.” He picked up his empty bottle from the table to dangle it from his fingertips, and shook it suggestively as he said, “Just get grandpa another beer first, okay, sweetie?”

Morty blushed brighter, but he quickly said, “O-okay, Rick.”

He took the bottle from Rick's hand and bounced to his feet to go to the kitchen. He felt Rick's heavy, silent stare on him the whole time, but he didn't think about it. 

It was just so nice to have someone to play with.

…

The Northgate Mall was about a half hour drive from their home, but Rick's spaceship cut that down to less than ten minutes. 

“I don’t need a chaperone, grandpa Rick. My friends are in the food court, so if you don’t tell mom I’m meeting with them instead of sticking with you, I won’t tell her you’ve been excavating under the garage and driving up the light bill.”

Rick was already preparing to fly out of the mall parking lot and waving her off. “Just don’t get - don’t follow in your mom’s footsteps and get knocked up in a public restroom before you’re legally old enough to buy a lottery ticket, okay? There’s a - a metaphor in there somewhere, but, uh, don’t - don’t think too hard about what it could be. Have fun, Sum-Sum!” 

She rolled her eyes and turned on her heel with a sharp snap of her ponytail, muttering under her breath, “I'm not gonna end up on _16_ _and_ _Pregnant_ , because my dad actually loves me.”

Morty set his hand on Rick's arm, and when his grandfather stopped checking the air speed indicator and looked down on him, he said shyly, “I - I’d like to go in, Rick.”

“He _does_ need a chaperone,” Summer called over her shoulder as she walked down the parking lot aisle towards the main entrance. “He could get kidnapped with a candy bar and a copy of _Call_ _of_ _Duty_ , and I am _not_ spending my whole weekend in a search party looking for my gullible little brother, so _don’t_ leave him alone. Have fun, grandpa Rick!”

Rick stared after her, a little taken aback by her chipper mockery, before he looked down at his grandson. Morty smiled nervously up at him, and he groaned, running a hand over his haggard face. “Fucking - ugh, Jesus, fine. Let’s go into this - collapsing shrine to capitalism, whatever.”

Morty beamed up at him, and he sighed.

“ _Fuck_.”

Northgate Mall was about as old as Rick, built after World War II and one of the first of its kind. It had several large anchor stores, and while they were on the decline with the advent of online shopping and the gradual destruction of the middle class, it was still a cultural touchstone for teenagers who just wanted some space to develop their own identity away from their parents. Summer was only a sophomore, but a junior had invited her to prom, so she was looking for a dress for the occasion, and had harangued Rick into taking her to the mall to shop and gossip with friends. 

Morty didn’t get to go out often, and while he knew the mall was a relic of a bygone era that was already well past its prime by the time he’d been born, perusing the shops was still a decent way to while away a couple hours outside of the house. He didn’t mind wandering around Old Navy, and GameStop was a good place to find out what he wanted to play next, and there were worse places to be than Barnes & Noble. He tried to open the passenger door, but the child safety lock had jammed after Summer got out, and he looked back over at his grandfather. Rick made a gesture of waspish acknowledgement, snatching out his flask and taking his sweet time sipping it down. “I know, I know - j-just gimme a minute, here, Morty. Grandpa - grandpa can’t be sober for this, sweetie.”

Morty blinked, because Rick already wasn’t sober, but he kept quiet about that. He waited patiently until Rick was sufficiently boozed up, because it required quite a bit of patience, and eventually Rick exhaled hard and came around to let him out. Morty smiled at him as he hopped down, and Rick rolled his eyes, but stopped sneering quite so hard. 

The mall was an enclosed affair, with a high, domed ceiling pouring down plenty of natural light. It was bright and beautiful and almost completely empty, a wide open geography of nowhere, a grand mausoleum of materialism with no mourners in sight. Rick rocked on his feet as they walked in, already bored and smacking his lips in thirst, but Morty ignored his sour mood and bounded inside. 

“Fuck, slow down, Morty,” Rick said, but it was halfhearted. Morty ran past the DSW, wanting to look at all the gag gifts and naughty products in Spencer’s, and Rick sighed and trailed along behind him, mumbling just loud enough for Morty to make out, “Really? Y’know there’re better shopping centers in Andromeda, right?”

Morty took a second to glance back at him, saying, “That’s okay, Rick, we don’t have to go to - all the way to another galaxy for me to look at things and w-wonder if buying those things would make me happier. We can do that right here in Seattle!” 

Rick broke out in a sudden, uncontrollable snort, shaking his head in genuine amusement. “Goddamn, Morty. That level of self-awareness has got to hurt.”

Morty laughed, pleased to have cut through his grandfather's griping, and made his way past all the salons and clothing stores, stepping onto the escalator to go to the second floor. Spencer’s was on the other side of the concourse and it was a bit of a walk to get there, so he sprang along quickly. He was happy to be out someplace familiar for once; the constant novelty of traveling to alien worlds wasn’t all bad, but it got exhausting, and there was nothing wrong with an outing where he actually knew where he was every once in a while. 

He was parsing through novelty t-shirts when a hand fell heavily on his shoulder and a raspy voice said in his ear, “Hey there, Morty.”

He jumped and dropped a shirt on the floor, ducking away from the hand and swiveling his eyes over to see who it was. His face went pale.

“Oh, h-hi, Frank.”

Frank Palicky looked down at him, narrow-eyed and pallid, mouth a hateful incision of hostility. Morty flinched down hard, unable to look him in the eyes for even a second. He bent down to pick up the shirt Frank's hello had made him drop, bunching it up in his hands between them. “What’re you, um, doing here?”

“I’m _buying_ _shit_ ,” Frank sneered, an escalation of aggression Morty couldn’t keep up with. “Y’know, with money? Not that you’d know much about that, with your deadbeat dad mooching off your wannabe doctor mom. Do they even have an IRA?”

Morty frowned, hands clenching up in cotton. “Jeez, Frank, that’s - that’s really personal. I don’t - I need to -”

“Who’re you here with?” Frank cut him off, grabbing his shoulder again. Morty looked at his hand, and he swallowed with difficulty. 

“With my - my grandpa.”

Frank made a show of looking around, grip going tighter as he did. “Hmm, I don’t see anyone around, Morty. Looks like you’re all alone.”

Morty glanced around frantically, and his stomach began to sink like a scuttled ship when he saw that Frank was right. Rick wasn’t around, and he hadn’t told him where he was going. He tried to step away from Frank’s grip on him again, but this time, the older boy held on tight, and he whimpered. 

“Frank, let me - let me go,” he said, with all the firmness of cygnet feathers. “He’s - he’s not far. He’s looking for me.”

Frank shot him a smile, an ugly thing full of crooked ivory and barbed wire. “Well, how about I help you find him?” 

Frank started dragging him away from the garment rack, and Morty dug his heels into the floor. “No, no, that’s okay, when you - my parents say that when you get lost y-y-you should stay put. He’ll - he’ll f-find me here.”

Frank kept pulling him, a hundred pounds of resistance no challenge for the older boy’s developing upper body strength. Morty started to panic, his feet slipping across the floor, and he opened his mouth to say something, anything to make this stop, but Frank snatched him close and sneered down at him from a scant inch away, “You gonna scream, Morty? Like a little girl?”

Morty got the uncomfortable feeling that Frank really, really wanted that. His voice was volcanic, his every breath a fire and brimstone service against his face, and Morty pursed his lips together, ducking his head as frightened tears welled up in his eyes. 

“I’m not - I’m not a little girl.”

Frank fisted his free hand up in the collar of Morty’s shirt, and laughed low and mean as he said, “ _Pussy_.”

Morty broke out in a little sob, and Frank laughed louder. “Jesus, you’re easy. C’mon, let’s go ‘find your grandpa.’ Maybe he’s in the bathrooms, or, I dunno, somewhere else without cameras.”

Utter terror consumed Morty as Frank started dragging him along down the aisle, and just as he was about to open his mouth to scream for help at the top of his lungs, embarrassment at sounding like a little girl be damned, he was grabbed from behind and Frank was picked bodily up off the ground by the back of his leather jacket. 

“Oh, looks like you found him,” Rick said, assessing Frank with all the clinical indifference of a pathologist cataloging the results of a fecal occult blood test. Frank’s eyes went wide, before he glared at Rick and started thrashing in the air. Rick watched him apathetically, just as bored as he was when he first walked in the door, and Frank snarled at him, “Lemme go, old man!” 

Rick shrugged, and said, “You got it, kid,” before he tossed him back against the garment rack Morty had just been looking through. It wasn’t that hard a throw, no more effort than pitching a piece of junk mail in a trash can, but Frank was caught so off guard he didn’t break his fall whatsoever. He hit his chin hard on the display bar before landing with all his weight on the floor. Morty heard his shoulder _crunch_ and the side of his head _thwack_ on the marble tiles, and he flinched back into Rick’s chest.

Frank moaned and cursed on the ground, rolling over to get his hands under himself. “Shit, _shit_ , _uugh!_ You - you can’t just - you’re gonna fucking pay for this! My dad’s a lawyer, and he's gonna fucking -”

Rick was already walking away, pulling Morty along behind him, saying flippantly, “Yeah, yeah, tell your daddy to sue me, you entitled little sociopath. See how that works out for you.”

They left Frank struggling to stand in the back of the store, and Rick looked down at Morty. “Did you want that shirt, Morty?” 

Morty blinked, shook up and sticking very close to his grandfather’s side. He looked down at the shirt he’d forgotten he’d been clutching in his hands. He held it up by its arms, and it unfolded to reveal the tongue-in-cheek quip, _‘My life is a very complicated drinking game.’_

Rick chuckled at it, and Morty could hear Frank Palicky groaning behind them, and he held the shirt close to himself as he said quietly, “I - uhm. Yeah. I-I think I do.”

Rick smiled at him and ruffled his hair in a way he was getting used to, and told him, “I’ll get it for you, then, sweetie.” 

Morty’s fear faded down into gratitude, and for the first time, he said, “Th-thanks, grandpa Rick.”

…

The ride home was quick and silent, Summer texting in the backseat with a half dozen bags of clothes and shoes beside her. She made a passing mention of how strange it was that Frank just up and disappeared from her group of friends so early, a touch of disappointment in her voice, but Rick said nothing about it, and Morty didn’t, either. When they pulled into the garage, Rick disengaged the child lock to let Summer out, but he told Morty to stay. 

“Mom’s eventually gonna notice you’re keeping him out all the time, grandpa Rick,” Summer said, tone chiding but disinterested as she toted her bags across the garage. “It might take a couple years, but, y’know. It’ll happen someday.”

“Yeah, and she’ll eventually find out you’re sneaking out at night to fool around with that blond bag of dicks. We don’t need to do anything to speed that up, though, do we?” 

Summer sighed and rolled her eyes, saying before she slammed the fire door shut with her foot, “No, grandpa Rick, we don’t.”

Morty glanced at Rick, holding his single purchase in his hands. Rick leaned across him to shut the passenger door Summer had left open, and gave Morty a calculating look.

“How long has that boy been bothering you, Morty?”

Morty stared at his knees. “Oh, he doesn’t really - I mean, not long. He just - shares a couple classes with Summer, a-and he sees us at the bus stop sometimes. It’s - he’s r-really not that bad.”

“Morty, look at me,” Rick said, a quiet demand. Morty did so, and Rick’s expression was so serious he shrank back against his seat. “D’you really not know what that kid wants to do to you, Morty?” 

Morty licked at his chapped lips, glancing away as he mumbled, “I - I guess beat me up a bit, and call me names?”

Rick reached over to grab his chin, to force his eyes back onto his, so Morty couldn’t look away from the horrific honesty lining his face as he said, “Morty, that kid is at home right now, fantasizing about a reality where he dragged you off somewhere private and _cut you open_ , understand?” 

Morty went pale, and he whispered, “That’s - that’s really not funny, Rick.”

“Well, there’re plenty of realities where it actually happened, so no. It’s not.” Rick agreed with him entirely, and that made it much, much worse. Morty shuddered, crinkling up the plastic bag in his hands, and he swallowed dryly in disbelief. 

“Rick, that’s taking it too far. Frank’s just - he’s just a jerk, he’s not a - a -”

“A little serial killer in the making? A sadistic freak exploring a-a-a penchant for piquerism?”

Morty’s face was blank with incomprehension, and Rick said flatly, “That means he gets hard thinking about _stabbing you_ , Morty, and not in the fun, euphemistic way. He wants to cut you up and make you bleed and watch you die slowly because it _sexually arouses him_. Get it?” 

Morty didn’t want to get it. He tried to shake his head no, but Rick’s fingers held his chin in place. “Stop it, Rick. Pl-please - please stop.”

“D’you think _he_ would’ve stopped if I hadn’t shown up, Morty? D’you - do you want me to take you to a dimension where he got away with you and left your mutilated body fifty yards into the woods behind the mall? It takes you about an hour to bleed out, Morty. D’you wanna see that?”

Morty’s vision swam with tears. He recoiled in terror, hands raising to cover his ears, mouth twisting up in an ugly cry line as he whimpered, “Don’t say - stop, _stop it_ , Rick, that’s _awful_. I-I-I don’t wanna hear things l-like that, Rick, _please_.”

Rick’s face was stern, eyes clear with the intent to dismantle doubt, to make sure Morty saw the handwriting on the wall and understood exactly what it said. He snatched Morty’s hands down from his ears and went on straight from the shoulder, “What, you don’t w-wanna hear about how he’s probably been dissecting roadkill and wondering what it’d feel like to dissect _you?_ Or how about - how he’s gonna graduate to torturing neighborhood pets to practice making his victims suffer as long as possible before he kills them? Fuck, I’d-I’d bet my portal gun he’d go after Snuffles first just because he’s _your_ dog, Morty.”

Morty gasped in utter horror before he crumpled up into a piercing sob that cut through the cabin, a dam of tears breaking over his face as the thought of something so awful happening to Snuffles - of him going missing - of his pretty, soft white fur being - he couldn’t think about it, he couldn’t, he _couldn’t_.

“Oh, sweetie,” Rick said, expression easing up the second his grandson broke down. He gathered him up in his arms and plucked him from his seat, carried him over the center console to hold him against his chest as he ran a hand through his hair and hushed him tenderly. “C’mere, come to grandpa, hey, hey, shh, shhh. Calm down, c-calm down. It’s okay, Morty, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s okay. Did I - oh, shh, shhhh, settle down, settle down now. Did I scare you, sweetie?” 

Morty shook in his arms, too distraught to say anything for or against Rick cradling him and gentling him like a spooked colt. He nodded against Rick’s shoulder, a surreal straightjacketed feeling snaking around him as Rick shushed him and shored him up in his lap and sifted through the shipwreck he’d just made of him.

“Well, there’re some scary fucking people out there, Morty, and they’re always l-looking - on the lookout for easy marks like you. You caught that little lunatic’s attention. He ain’t gonna give up on you for nothing, Morty, believe me.”

Morty hugged himself as Rick hugged him, and he saw the look in Frank’s eyes when he asked him if he was going to scream, and his stomach turned violently on itself when his disbelief deserted him completely.

“But - but why?” he whispered.

“Why what, sweetie?” Rick asked, resting his chin on top of his grandson’s head. “Why are there fucked up sexually motivated serial killers out there, or why did one pick you to try and cut his teeth on?”

Morty’s curled up tighter in his grandfather’s lap, and he clarified with a tiny, trembling sob, “W-why _me?_ ”

Rick tucked a curl behind his ear, shifting the arm under his knees higher to hold him closer. “You just kinda call out for it, sweetie. If that boy’s a shark, then you - you’re out skinny dipping off the coast of Amity Island at dusk.”

Morty could tell that was a reference to something, but he didn’t know what. He didn’t have to get it, though; Rick meant that he was a soft target, an easy kill, a tenderhearted thing trailing blood in the water.

That he was asking for it. 

“What - what - what do I - what do I _do?_ He’s - god, I’m gonna be in high school with him soon! He’s - he’s already - and Summer’s been trying to invite him over - and he - he -”

“Calm down, Morty, don’t - shh, now, shh, grandpa’s here. He’s not gonna - I won’t let him hurt you, sweetie. Calm down, now, just breathe. It’s gonna be okay.”

“H-h-h-how is it okay? He’s gonna - you said he - that he wants to -” Morty started hyperventilating, and Rick sighed out a warm breath that ghosted down the back of his neck. He shuddered as his field of vision narrowed down to the collar of Rick’s sweater, the long line of his neck and the pale five o’clock shadow darkening his chin. Morty saw him speak more than he heard it.

“Hey, hey, now, don’t worry, sweetie. Grandpa’ll - grandpa’s gonna take care of it, okay?”

Morty froze. He didn’t know if he wanted to know the answer, but he had to ask through a hard swallow, “What - what do you mean, Rick?” 

Rick chuckled, and answered without hesitation, “I mean I’m gonna kill him, baby.” 

Snow blanketed Morty’s skin, his stomach an ice floe floating in an Arctic sea. He looked up at his grandfather’s face, for some indication that he was joking, or that he’d misheard, or that this was somehow a nightmare his subconscious had cobbled together after overhearing one too many of his mother’s _Cold Case Files_ \- but no. Rick was uncannily calm, eyes unclouded despite the firewater flowing through his veins, and Morty saw the alien from the museum, vacant eyes staring off into nothing as liquefied grey matter dripped from a hole where half a skull had once been, and Morty knew. 

His grandfather didn’t make idle threats. 

“Y-you - you can’t do that, Rick,” he said, timbre yellow and face pale, hands holding each other for a lack of anything else to hold on to. Rick only continued to pet his hair, trade wind steady and true. His lips ticced up in amusement, and Morty shivered.

“And why’s that, Morty?” 

“It’s - it’s illegal,” he tried, but as soon as he said it he remembered he’d argued that before, and Rick hadn’t cared, so he said further, “It’s _wrong_.”

Rick leaned back in his seat, pulling him with him. He relaxed against the headrest, rolling his eyes without any real heat. “What, and letting that reincarnation of Albert Fish get around to acting out his twisted fucking fantasies on you _isn’t?_ ” 

Morty didn’t know who that was, but given the disgust with which Rick said his name, he didn’t think he wanted to. “Y-you can’t just - you can’t punish someone just for _thinking_ about doing something bad. He hasn’t - done anything yet, Rick. As long as he only thinks about it, he - he hasn’t done anything wrong.” 

Rick cracked up a little, humor returning to his eyes as he said, “Morty, it could not be any more obvious that you were forced to read _1984_ ,” he paused to laugh a little harder before he finished, “or at least the SparkNotes summary of _1984_.”

Morty flushed, because that was wildly accurate, but he wiped at his wet face and said with a little more weight in his voice, “It’s still wrong. Y-you don’t know for sure that - that he was going to - you don’t know that for _certain_ , do you?”

“D’you mean certain the way I use certain, or the way you use certain?” 

Morty paused, considering this for a second, before he asked, “W-what’s the difference?”

“Virtually everything.”

Morty blinked at him in absolute bafflement, and Rick sighed. “Look, Morty, I can say with _very high confidence_ that that kid has a disturbing obsession with sharp objects, and I can be _virtually_ certain that he daydreams about butchering you and burying you in his backyard, but no, I’m not certain in the way that you’re using that word. Th-that doesn’t mean that I’m not right, though, because I am, just that you can’t be certain of anything until it actually happens.”

Morty rubbed at his temples. “Okay, so - so you’re saying that you’re almost certain that it happens, because it happens in other dimensions?” 

“That, and a blind man could see he’s got a murder boner for you, Morty.”

Morty pulled a face, stomach acid rippling in repugnance. “Oh, god, R-Rick, _ew_ , s-sick.”

Rick shrugged. “Hey, paraphilias usually are. Humans are fucking gross and weird.” 

Morty tried to collect his thoughts, wringing his hands together as his grandfather watched him and kept on carding through his hair, quite content to wait as Morty figured out what he wanted to say. 

“Are there dimensions where he doesn’t - um, hurt me?”

“Morty, there are dimensions where he stars in _Avengers: Disassemble_ and gets everyone to care about climate change. If-if-if that’s your criteria for deciding anything, you wouldn’t - you’d never even get outta bed in the morning.” 

Morty stared at the bag with Rick’s gift in his lap, at the way Rick’s arm held him up under his knees, and wondered about the dimensions where Rick never showed back up at all. He frowned. “Say - say I believe you, Rick -”

“Oh, I do, because you fucking should.”

Frank’s awful smile flashed in his mind, a malignant gash that could only herald something truly heinous, and he wilted a little against Rick’s chest as he conceded quietly, “... okay, then. I-I do, um, believe you, Rick, but - as long as there’s the _chance_ that this is a dimension where he doesn’t - do anything to me, then you can’t kill him.”

“I mean, yeah, I can,” Rick said, painfully blunt and about as blasé about murder as a man that got paid to do it, and a shiver ran through Morty again, a cool fissure of fright travelling from the top of his head all the way to the tips of his toes. “But if you’re gonna work yourself into a Cartesian ethical conundrum over it, Morty, then I’ll wait for him to make another move on you,” Rick let go of Morty’s knees to raise a couple fingers in front of his face and specify, “On two conditions.” 

Morty looked between Rick’s hand and his face, and gave a small nod. “Okay, Rick. Wh-what are they?”

“One,” Rick held up his index finger, tone brooking no argument as he went on, “Understand that this is just a stay of execution. It might take a week, it might take a year or two, but the next time that kid bothers you, _which he_ _will_ , he’s fucking dead, Morty. Do not complain to me when I do this world a favor and put that sick animal down.”

Morty trembled, but nodded again. Rick eyed him intensely as he raised his middle finger alongside his first, and said, “Two.”

Rick let the silence draw out, until Morty was desperate for him to speak, strung high and tight in his lap, an overwrought ball of stress and anxiety wondering what the other condition could possibly be. Rick watched him closely, and Morty had never felt so seen in all his life. He flexed his feet, and he started to sweat, and he fiddled with the handles of the bag sitting on his upper thighs for something to do with his hands, until finally, in a voice dark as all the different shades of night, Rick let the other shoe drop.

“Do _not_ wander off from me again, Morty. _Do you understand me?_ ”

Morty went very still, like a mouse that had just caught sight of a tomcat’s tail lashing in the shadows, and he swallowed hard. Rick stared at him, withering as a noonday sun in the height of summer, and Morty felt a sharp pang of self-blame pierce his heart. He should never have run off in the first place. 

None of this would have happened if he had just stayed by Rick’s side. 

His voice quavered, but he nodded again as he said quietly, “I - I understand, grandpa Rick.” 

Rick’s expression softened, and he spoiled his fingers over the lanugo locks edging his grandson’s hairline, and he said with low, lightless approval, “There’s a good boy.”

Morty closed his eyes, a deep confliction instantiating itself in his core. While he was sure Rick touched him far too freely and much too often, he was too scared to tell him to stop. Rick was constantly on the precipice of brutality, kinetic potential for violence only ever just contained within a poorly constructed cage of propriety; Morty could almost smell it, the scent of predation just kept in check, the compulsion to always come out on top, each cost and every consequence be damned. 

Rick hummed, calm and quiet as he ever got, and Morty didn’t know what to do besides be still and wait for him to grow tired of touching him. 

He thought of Frank Palicky calling him a pussy and trying to drag him somewhere without cameras, and he let Rick pet his hair even though he didn’t like it, and he felt soothed despite his discomfort.

_“- wants to cut you up -”_

It wasn’t really that bad, was it?

_“- and make you bleed -”_

He was being unfair. Rick wasn’t hurting him by being a bit handsy. It wasn’t that high a price to pay to make him a little happier and help keep him calm. 

_“- and watch you die slowly because it_ sexually arouses _-”_

He tried to relax against Rick’s chest, because there were far, far worse things in the world than having his hair played with and being called a _good boy_.

…

“It’s _freezing_ in here, Rick.”

The packaged terminal air conditioner in the hotel room was massive, large as a pool table and cranked up to full blast. It also didn’t help that Morty was sopping wet and dripping pink water onto the saxony carpet. His teeth began to chatter loud enough for Rick to hear, and his grandfather rolled his eyes as he shed his lab coat and began kicking off his Doc Martens. 

“Well, maybe if you could learn how to tie your goddamn shoelaces, you wouldn’t have tripped into that salina tank, M-Morty.”

Morty rubbed vigorously at his arms, trembling like mimosa leaves in a funneled breezeway. “I _know_ how to tie my shoes, Rick. Maybe if you didn’t have to insult that foreman, w-we wouldn’t’ve had to try to run - outrun those - those -”

“They’re called creepshaws, that foreman had it coming, and _no_ , Morty, you _do not know_ how to tie your shoes. It’s supposed to be a square knot, and you’d know how to do one if your dad wasn’t such a worthless fuckwit.”

Rick stripped off his sweater and tossed it over the dresser as he walked to the back of the room. Morty stood just inside the closed doorway, so chilled a light dusting of pale freckles was visible across the bridge of his nose, his curls weighted with brinewater and hanging halfway down his forehead. Rick looked back at him with his hand on the bathroom door handle, and said, “W-what are you doing? Hurry up and take those - get those clothes off, Morty. You’re gonna get a lot worse than a headache if we don’t get that halobacteria off of you like - fuck, like ten minutes ago.” 

Morty flushed through the cold, his hands stilling on his upper arms. “Why - why can’t we just do this at home, again?”

Rick looked up at the mural of crocodile icefish brandishing spears on the ceiling as if searching for patience in their piscine faces. “I told you, the water on Earth won't desalinate your blood like the water here will, now hurry up and get undressed. You’re gonna go in- _urrgh_ -into a hypernatremic seizure soon, and it’d be a lot easier on my back if you didn’t force me to carry you to the tub while you’re frothing at the mouth, Morty.”

Rick stepped inside the bathroom and Morty heard the water start running, and he stared at his rose pink stained sneakers in shivering silence. While stripping out of his wet clothes and sliding into a warm bath sounded nice, the thought of being naked in front of Rick froze him through more solidly than the wallbanger wedged up against the hotel’s window. His head hurt, and his mouth was steadily drying out, and his skin felt too tight against his aching muscles, but he couldn’t get himself to start taking off his clothes.

Rick leaned back out the bathroom doorway, and narrowed his eyes at him. “Morty, every second you keep those clothes on pushes you one second closer to a massive brain hemorrhage, and I’m in no mood to perform an emergency craniotomy on you, so get your ass in here _right fucking now.”_

Morty yelped quietly, cringing down into his collarbone, and Rick sighed, leaning his forearm on the door’s fluted moulding in quiet frustration. He breathed out slowly through his nose, and tried again, a little softer, “C’mere, Morty. It’s - it’s just a bath. It’ll make you feel better, baby.” 

Morty went bright red, and he couldn’t look Rick in the eyes when he asked, “D’you - uhm, do you have to - be there, Rick?”

Rick’s fingers tightened over the edge of the door trim, but his voice was even as he said, “The longer you stand there, the more likely it gets that you’ll slip into a coma and drown in here, so yeah, I kinda do.” 

Morty glanced around the room in hopeless dismay, as if some other solution could be found in its filigree patterned wallpaper. It wouldn’t be the first time Rick had seen him naked; they’d changed into local outfits together to blend in with native species several times; he’d checked him over for parasites after hiking through primeval forests and primordial jungles; he’d had him undress to cool off when he’d overheated in rain shadow deserts and radium savannas. This, though, was the first time Rick had told him he needed to be nude in his presence for longer than a few minutes at the most. 

He didn’t want to do this, he really, really didn’t, but Rick’s expertise was indisputable, and the wallpaper presented him with no other options.

“C’mon, sweetie. It’s no big deal. Just come over here, okay?” Rick said, tenderness belied by the furrowed lines of his brow. His patience was a precious resource, and it was depleting fast. 

Morty bit his lip, but began to plod across the room, reluctance clear in every step but ultimately meaningless. Rick waited for him to get past the queen-sized bed before he took hold of his upper arm and pulled him into the bathroom, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to insinuate a sense of urgency, slamming the door shut behind him. He grabbed the bottom of his grandson’s shirt and began snatching it over his head quickly, and Morty gave a little shout of, “Hey, hey! Don’t -”

“Morty, I told you, these clothes need to come off _immediately_ ,” he snapped, knocking Morty’s flailing hands out of the way and yanking his wet shirt off completely. He worked his fingers into Morty’s waistband and began unbuttoning his jeans, speaking over his grandson’s high-pitched protests, “They’re soaked with an osmotic archaea that is seeping into your bloodstream, and I don’t know how much more clear I can be that you’re about to _die of salt poisoning_ , Morty, now _strip_.” 

“Jesus, R-Rick, stop! I’ll - I’ll do it - just stop!”

Rick let go of his pants with a small shove, and sat down on the toilet. He spread his legs wide, and set an elbow on his knee, and circled his hand in a gesture that said, _‘Go on, then.’_ Morty shivered despite the steam shrouding the room, and he sat down opposite Rick on the outer lip of the tub to take off his shoes. It was easy, seeing as they were untied. He peeled off his socks, and then he began unzipping his fly, because Rick had already undone the button. He was all too aware of Rick’s eyes on him, a stare like a seastorm, a severe but distant danger. 

“D’you hafta watch?” he asked, embarrassed. The flicker of amusement through the annoyance in Rick’s expression didn’t make him feel any better.

“You ain’t got nothing I haven’t seen before, baby.”

Morty shrank in on himself. This didn’t feel right, but he didn’t know what to do about it. It wasn’t that he thought Rick was lying to him about needing to wash off the pink water he’d fallen into; he did feel unwell, and he was sure this bath would make him feel better. It was more the look he’d caught on Rick’s face when he’d hoisted him up out of the tank, the eyes of a man with a handful of aces before he slipped his poker face back on. 

He couldn’t shake the feeling that Rick didn’t mind this turn of events in the slightest.

He held his breath as he slid off his pants, not so much writing off his misgivings as understanding that the only way out of this situation was through it. He ignored the sensation of being seen as he pivoted into the water behind him, happy to get beneath it, to curl his legs up and wrap his arms around his knees. He wanted to make himself small, for there to be less of him to look at, but Rick made a sound of disapproval, and he looked up at him in nervous question.

“Lay out flat on your back, Morty,” Rick said, voice bored where his eyes weren’t. “You need to be completely submerged. Go on.” 

The water was a little too warm, and the tap was running loud, and his mouth was so dry he thought it might crack around the edges if he opened it again. He swallowed down nothing and did as he was told, spreading out supine and dipping his head under the water with his eyes pinched shut. When he rebroke the surface and breathed in deeply, he thought he heard Rick make a strange sound, but he couldn’t be sure over the rush of water hitting water and the thrum of his own heart in his ears.

He sat back up and curled into himself again, glancing over at his grandfather to ask, “Can I - can I drink this, Rick?”

“Yeah. It’s safe,” Rick nodded, his mouth a flat line. Morty thought he looked a bit flushed, too, but he assumed it was from the steam steadily building in the room, dampening every surface and fogging the captain’s mirror hung above the sink.

Morty leaned forward to cup his hands under the faucet, filling and raising them to his mouth to take a small sip. It was sweeter than the water on Earth, and ironically far more earthy. He couldn’t help a little moan of relief as soon as it hit his tongue, and suddenly his thirst was the most urgent thing in the entire universe. He drank from his hands again and again, a dozen times, two dozen, but he needed more. 

“That’s enough, Morty.”

He heard Rick, but he was far away. He’d never tasted anything so good in his life, a warm trail of revival down his parched throat, a sensation spilling out across his chest so heavenly it almost hurt. He couldn’t fill his hands fast enough, couldn’t drink from them greedily enough, so he shifted closer to tilt his head beneath the faucet, to let it pour directly into his mouth. 

“Morty. _Stop_.” 

He couldn’t, though. His stomach was starting to hurt, but he couldn’t make himself stop gulping it down. He drank, and he drank, and he drank, until hands snatched him back from the faucet and he whined in sharp displeasure. 

“I said _that’s enough_ , Morty.”

Rick turned off the water, and took a knee by the tub to hold him in place by his shoulders. Morty struggled, but when Rick dug his thumbs deep into his clavicular ligaments and shook him once, he gasped softly and snapped his eyes open. He looked up at his grandfather, almost in tears, and choked out a confused little, “Wh-what… what was that?”

Rick pushed him to lean against the back of the tub, sitting down on the bathmat to watch him carefully. “Well, you were dying of thirst, for one, but apparently you’ve also got a weakness for wisteria water.” 

Morty flicked his eyes between the bathwater and his grandfather, no less bewildered than before. His stomach was distended, mildly uncomfortable but not unbearable. His mouth no longer felt dry, but he still wanted to drink more, no matter how full he was, and if Rick hadn’t stopped him, he was sure that’s exactly what he’d be doing.

“But… didn’t you say it was safe?” 

Rick settled his back against the side of the tub, bracing his dirty socked feet against the high gloss vanity cabinets across the floor. He dug around in his back pocket and produced a crushed pack of Newports, tapped out a cigarette and stuck it between his lips. “It is safe, sweetie, you just like it a little bit more than I thought you would.”

Morty watched him as he drew a near empty matchbook from the cigarette pack and tore one out to strike across the callous on the bottom of his left palm. He held the lit match to the tip of the cigarette in his mouth, pulling on it firm a few times to get a good cherry going, and shook the match out with a flick of his wrist. Morty scrunched up his face, and complained, “D’you have to smoke that r-right next to me, Rick?”

Rick exhaled a cloud of diaphanous smoke as he shot back, “If I step out, are you gonna start drinking the bathwater?”

Morty sunk lower into the tub, and Rick kept smoking on the floor. Between the rising steam and the burning tobacco, Morty was beset by vertigo, but he still felt far better than he had before he got in the tub. He was oddly calm, a peculiar curiosity pervading his senses, like every question was a question worth asking, but it didn’t matter if he got answers or not. 

“Can you at least open the door back up, then?”

Rick reached up to pop the handle and let the door fall back open, and Morty looked out into the narrow closet across the hall. It was lined with transparent drawers, all brightly lit and filled with water. He stared at it sedately, and asked, “What’s that for?”

Rick followed his line of sight, dragging slow and easy on his cigarette. “For Whiteblood babies, Morty.”

Morty accepted this, and trailed his hands over the water above his knees. He wondered about how long he needed to stay in the bath, so he asked, “How long do I need to stay in here?”

Rick glanced at him, resting his arm along the lip of the tub. “About an hour, Morty. By then the serum sodium concentration in your blood’ll be back to normal.”

“Oh,” Morty said, staring at the way his feet distorted when the water rippled. He touched his toes, and started to pull his knees back up to his chest, but Rick pushed them back down to span the length of the tub, explaining calmly, “The more you stay submerged, the better. Lay down, baby.”

Morty followed Rick’s direction, tractable and tame, and covered his privates with his hands. He was sure he should, but the exigency of embarrassment was as remote from his mind as they currently were from Earth. He eyed the fish scale textured ceiling, and asked, “Why do you call me that?”

Rick stared at him, contemplative. He held his cigarette between his index and middle finger, and asked in return, “Why do you think, sweetheart?”

A reticulation of warmth awoke within him, a net of heat cast deep where there had only been shallows before, trying to trawl up something sleeping and secret and desperate to stretch out the ache of stillness. It felt like blushing on the inside, beneath his ribcage, below his heart, between his legs. He drew his thighs together tight, and he breathed a little harder, and he could only think that sweetheart really didn’t sound so bad.

Rick didn’t look at him so much as breathe in the sight of him, pulling the picture he painted into his lungs no different from the vapor issuing from the cherry on the tip of his cigarette. He exhaled leisurely, a gradual sigh of smoke that swam before Morty’s eyes across the ceiling. Morty watched it curl and spin and fade away, and he asked, “Am I high?”

Rick chuckled, a brass choir of sound that filled Morty’s head and stoked the kindling catching behind his stomach. He squirmed as his grandfather said, “M-maybe a little, Morty, but I swear I didn’t know it’d hit you like this. It didn’t do jackshit for me back when I tried it.”

Morty looked at Rick, and tried to inflect an accusation, or at least a statement, but his tone lifted up into a question at the end despite his attempt to flatten the cadence of his voice. “You got me high?”

Rick laughed a little harder, half covering his face with his free hand. “Not on purpose, sweetie, I promise, and you really did need the water.” He shook his head, saying to himself with another chuckle, “You gotta be fucking kidding me, c’mon. G-gimme a goddamn - Jesus, gimme a break here.”

“What’s so funny?”

 _“You,”_ Rick said, leaning his head back over the water to eye him bright and mirthful. “The first time you catch a headchange, and it’s - it’s on fucking _water_. I just - Morty, you're so - Christ on his _fucking_ _throne_ , baby, you’re _precious_.”

Morty blushed on top of the sanguine stain of steam. He wanted to sound stern, but his tongue twisted his attempt at a command into an awkward inquiry, and he said, “St-stop it?”

Rick snickered loudly, unable to help himself. “I-I’m sorry, are you asking me, or telling me?”

“Stop… it?”

“Wh-what was that, sweetie?”

_“Stop it?”_

Rick made a buzzer sound, beside himself with laughter as he teased technically, “Four hundred, y-you’ve sent a request this server cannot understand. Please - _heh_ \- please try again later.” 

Morty frowned, but found it extremely difficult to hold onto his irritation for long. It drained through his fingers like the water that had made him feel this way in the first place, and he rested against the back of the tub again. He thought about Rick’s question, turning it over in his mind as Rick’s amusement abated and his cigarette’s cherry crept closer to its filter. 

“Is it because you like to make fun of me?” he asked, and Rick looked over at him, face blank for half a second before he got back on the same track as his grandson.

“I do like picking on you, baby, but no. That’s not why.” 

Morty foraged about his mind for alternate reasons. Ever since the incident with Frank Palicky, _baby_ wasn’t just a thing Rick said; it was his favorite thing to call him. It rolled off his tongue naturally, decisive and demulcent, a linguistic lull in his speech that lit a little lamp inside Morty’s stomach. 

“Why don’t you call anyone else baby?”

Rick exhaled a pillar of smoke from his nose, watching it trail lazily to the ceiling, and answered with an air of solemnity, “Because no one else is my baby, Morty. Only you are.”

Morty’s toes twitched, his knees turning inwards. He panted, subtle and small and sintering, and Rick stared at him sidelong, resting his head in his hand as he finished his cigarette. “You like that, sweetheart? Being my baby?”

Morty gasped, eyes falling half shut as he slid lower in the water. It splashed around his ears, his chin, and he wanted so badly to drink more of it, but he remembered Rick’s firm voice telling him he’d had enough, his fingers digging into his skin to make him stop, and he resisted the urge. He wanted to move his hands, to do something with them besides maintain his modesty, but he kept them in place, and looked at the electric blue tub surround so he didn’t have to see Rick seeing him. 

He tried again to speak in something other than the interrogative, but no matter how hard he attempted to sound assertive, his voice came out soft and uncertain, as if he were seeking permission to reject his grandfather’s assumptions about him. 

“No, I don’t?”

Rick snuffed out his cigarette butt on the mosaic tile next to himself, and said quietly, “I dunno, Morty. You really don’t sound too sure about that.” 

Morty frowned, because he was physically incapable of sounding sure right now, but he disregarded this as more of his grandfather’s strange brand of teasing. Rick just knew he didn’t like being called a baby, and did it to fluster and upset him. He gave up trying to argue when he couldn’t even wrangle his tone into anything resembling conviction. 

“Is this gonna wear off soon?”

Rick nodded, returning his pack of Newports to his back pocket. “You were pretty dehydrated, so your cells will burn through it fast. The psychotropic effects will pass by the time you’re ready to get outta the bath.”

“How much longer will that be now?”

Rick dropped his feet from the vanity cabinets, letting his legs spread open in a wide ring. He got comfortable, setting both of his elbows on the edge of the tub, and said with a sigh, “It hasn’t even been ten minutes, sweetie.”

Morty groaned. “Do you have to be here the whole time, Rick?”

“If I leave, you’ll drink more, and then you’ll be like this all night long, Morty.”

Morty didn’t want that, so he pouted and fidgeted his feet against one another. He tried to keep quiet, but the urge to ask questions was overwhelming, and he only made it about a minute before he asked, “Are you gonna smoke another cigarette?”

Rick looked at him, considering it for a moment, before he shook his head, and said, “Nah, Morty.”

He straightened his back against the tub in a languorous stretch, tensing and rolling his hands to crack his joints in a way that Morty grimaced to hear. Rick said it was just air bubbles popping in synovial fluid, but he still didn’t like the way it sounded. Rick relaxed into the bathmat again, and smirked down at him.

“Just the one for now, I think.”

The rest of the hour passed in a docile cascade of questions, most of which Rick answered with quiet humor. He was evasive on some of them; _“How old are you?”_ garnered a cagey _“Old enough,”_ and _“What's the deal with time travel?”_ only elicited an irritated sigh. _“Why did you leave my mom?”_ got a long, silent stare into some faraway place that existed decades before he was born, and he moved on from it with nervous haste.

Eventually, Rick unstopped the drain and let the water empty out around him. He curled up in a tight ball, the chill of the hotel setting back in quick without the warmth of the bath shielding his skin, and he set back to shivering just as hard as he had been when he first walked in the doorway. Rick tossed a towel over him and began rubbing him down, drying his hair, his back, his arms, under his chin and across his chest, and Morty was too cold and too tired to worry about complaining that he could do it himself.

His teeth started chattering again, and he asked what felt like his thousandth question, “H-h-how are you not f-freezing in h-here?”

Rick wrapped the towel around his grandson’s shoulders and pulled him to stand, coming to the end of his patience for questions as he said, “I’m hot natured, I guess, now c’mon, Morty, let’s get you under the covers.” 

Morty stumbled over the edge of the tub after him, knowing if he didn’t follow along quickly enough Rick wouldn’t hesitate to carry him. It wasn’t until he was sitting under the down comforter in the bed and watching Rick fiddle with the curved television on top of the dresser that Morty began to feel a tendril of uncertainty unfold in his stomach. 

“Hey, aren’t we, um - w-when are we going home?”

Rick didn’t look at him as he said, “Sometime tomorrow, Morty. You should really be able to stop playing _Twenty Questions_ by now, so maybe, y’know, try that.” 

Morty looked around the alien hotel room, the seashell framed pictures of anthropomorphic fish with cutting, carrot orange eyes, the snowburst bones hanging from the crown moulding along the ceiling’s edges, and he clutched the comforter tight in his hands.

“But - but I wanna go home tonight, Rick,” he said, so worried about having to spend an entire night here he didn’t even notice he’d finally been able to articulate a statement again.

“Morty, I’m not about to go back to Earth just to come straight back here tomorrow. I need that ice-nine, and now I need to get that shisty motherfucking foreman back, too, so we might as well spend the night and knock it out first thing in the morning. Besides, I-I-I already paid for this room for the night, and I actually do get tired, Morty. Keeping up with your clumsy ass is fucking exhausting.”

Morty pulled the blanket higher up his chest, tugging the damp towel closer around his neck. He tried plaintively, “I don't have anything to wear, though.”

Rick grabbed his sweater off the dresser and tossed it over his shoulder, not turning from where he was splicing a sliver of pink crystal to the tubular electron guns at the back of the television. “Wear that. I’ll get housekeeping to wash your clothes tonight. Now lay down and quit being a pain in my ass already, goddamn, Morty.”

Morty flushed and fingered the threadbare cuff of his grandfather’s sweater, finding something about the thought of wearing it absolutely humiliating. He wanted to sleep in his own pajamas, in his own bed, in his own room, but Rick had rattled off five reasons why they should stay, and he couldn’t think of how to argue with him. 

When Rick finished altering the reception grid on the television and sat down on the foot of the bed with the remote, Morty asked timidly, “Can I call my dad, Rick?” 

Rick shrugged. “I don’t care, Morty, call whoever you want.”

“Um…” Morty looked towards the bathroom, where his phone was in the front pocket of his salt-soaked jeans, shorted out and unusable. Even if it weren’t broken, he’d still have to ask Rick to defraculate it to intercept a cell tower signal all the way on Earth. Rick looked back at him, and then at the bathroom, and sighed, digging his phone out of his pocket and unlocking it. 

“What do you even need to call that idiot for, anyway?” he asked, annoyed, as he handed his grandson his cellphone. 

Morty took it from him with both hands, clicking on the Contacts icon. “I wanna check in on Snuffles.” 

Rick frowned, but started flicking through channels in silence. Morty scrolled to the J's, but didn't find his father's name. "What d'you have him in here under, Rick?"

Rick leaned down to pick his lab coat up off the floor, procuring his flask and unscrewing the cap as he said, “‘Daughter’s Dreamkiller.’”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Morty whispered, wincing for his dad. He found the correct contact, and hit call.

“Hello?”

His father sounded suspicious and guarded, no doubt confused as to why his father in law would call him for anything. Morty felt a spike of sympathy, all too familiar with the apprehensive anxiety of talking to someone that had nothing but disdain for you, and his voice was mollifying as he said, “H-hey, dad, it’s me.”

“Morty? God, son, it's nearly ten o’clock. Where are you?” Jerry asked, sharp and worried. 

“I’m with Rick on Daco-Daco in the Venturi Nebula, dad. I’m - I’m okay. Rick says we’re - that we’re gonna spend the night.”

“The Venturi - _what_ _?_ He didn’t check in with us about -” Jerry cut off, and Morty heard his mother’s muffled voice in the background, but couldn't make out what she was saying. Going by his father’s disbelieving protests, though, it wasn’t hard to guess at what her feelings on the matter were. “But Beth, he’s - I _know_ it’s not a school night - are you _serious_ right now? There’s no way - you can’t be -”

Across the room, Morty heard his sister shout, “Oh, my god, if he gets to stay out all night with grandpa Rick, why can’t I stay over at Tammy’s? _Not_ _fair, mom!_ ”

There was a short silence, and then a long sigh on the other end of the line. “Well, Morty, your mom says that that is - just fine. Just so long as you’re home - _sometime_ tomorrow.”

It was clear that Jerry didn’t think it was fine at all, his tone deeply stilted and upset, but he’d reluctantly capitulated to his wife’s blessing. A little cut opened up in Morty’s chest, a mild melancholy for his mother’s disregard and his father’s defeat, and he nodded with a frown even though his dad couldn’t see him. He knew his parents wouldn’t demand he return home, though a small part of him really wished they would.

“Yeah, dad. I-I know. He said we’ll be back by tomorrow night at the latest. I was just - I wanted to make sure Snuffles was okay before I went to bed.”

“Snuffles is fine,” Jerry said, patient and a little long suffering. Morty had recently taken to asking about his dog often when he was away, constantly needing reassurance that his four legged friend was safe in the house. Jerry didn’t ask why, though, and just kept a closer eye on the dog for his son while Rick had him off galavanting about the universe. “He’s right here, sleeping in the living room. There’s nothing to worry about, son.”

Morty relaxed against the pillows, a tension evaporating from his muscles he hadn’t realized he’d started building up. “Thanks, dad. I’ll, um, I guess I’ll see you -”

“Wait, are you okay? Did Rick feed you? You’re sleeping somewhere safe, right?”

Rick glared at the television as he took a dram from his flask, and Morty heard his mother hiss out a quiet, “ _Jerry!_ ”

“Yeah, dad, I’m - he’s taking care of me. Th-thank you for asking.” Morty could sense Rick’s growing irritation, and he said quickly, “I gotta go, now, okay? I’ll be home tomorrow. Love you, dad.”

Jerry sounded beside himself with concern, but he said, for lack of any other course of action, “I love you, too, son. Good night.”

“Good night,” Morty said back, aching with empathy for his father’s disheartened tone as he ended the call. He handed Rick his phone, and told him softly, “Thank you, grandpa Rick.” 

Rick snatched the phone back, muttering darkly to himself as he pressed the volume up with a little too much force, “Does he think I’m _starving_ you out here? Christ, what - what kinda fucking monster does he take me for?”

“He’s - he’s just a little w-worried, Rick,” Morty said, a clay pigeon defense for his dad, but his voice was drowned out by the television. He looked over at it, taking in a scene of people posing theatrically in a kitchen. They all moved about with the careful exactness of blocking, delivering every line with excruciatingly precise diction. 

_“- but, by my modesty, the jewel in my dower, I would not wish any companion in the world but you, nor can imagination form a shape besides yourself to like of, but I prattle -”_

He blinked. “ _The Tempest?”_

Rick looked over his shoulder at him in utter incredulity, and he picked at a loose thread on the sweater in his lap, shrugging and drawing his knees close to his chest to rub his chilled feet over each other. “We - uh, we covered it last semester, be-before winter break. I thought it was okay.”

“Did you, now?” Rick asked, a soft sort of harassment in his voice as he eyed his grandson in mild amusement, and Morty flushed. He didn’t understand why he felt embarrassed, but he did. Rick had a way of making him want to cover himself up with the slightest of glances, to shrink and recoil and hide away, and suddenly the blanket and towel covering him might as well have been made out of translucent plastic.

One of the people on the screen opened the fridge and pulled out a few rashers of bacon and a carton of eggs, saying as he began fixing breakfast, _“Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale? Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.”_

Morty watched the characters go about a peaceful morning like overwrought thespians, and asked, “Why are they talking like that?”

Rick laid out across the bottom of the bed as he said, “Probably a dimension where everyone can only speak in quotes from Shakespeare. Boring.”

He flipped to a commercial about the importance of spaying and neutering your human, mournful piano music playing over images of dozens of naked people laying in cages, and Morty tilted his head. “So it’s TV from other dimensions?”

Rick nodded, idly switching the channels as he drank from his flask. “I call it interdimensional cable. Neat, huh?” 

Morty did find it neat, but he was too naked and too cold to really enjoy it. His skin broke out in gooseflesh, and he was unable to get the blanket close enough to his skin to warm up, and he said, “I’m r-really cold, R-Rick.” 

Rick didn’t look back at him, watching a show about aliens covering up human life on their planet. “Then put on my sweater, Morty.” 

Morty drew his shoulders up around his ears, glancing over at the air conditioner beside them. Its interface panel was utterly indecipherable to him, and he asked, “Can’t - can’t you turn on the heat or something?”

“Morty, the Whitebloods have no heat. Their cardiovascular systems are designed for the cold, so it would literally kill them. This is as warm as it’s gonna get in here, so put on my sweater and shut up.”

Morty shivered, and watched Rick drink and watch television, and went all of the reds of a scattering sunset as he did as he was told. The sweater was far too big on him, hanging off his shoulder and dangling over his hands and draping halfway down his thighs, and it smelled of whisky and cigarettes and diesel, but it was well-worn soft and it helped warm him a bit. It was much better than the damp towel, at least. 

After about an hour of increasingly bizarre programs and commercials, Rick stretched and stood from the bed to gather and set his grandson’s clothes outside the door before calling housekeeping to pick them up and get them cleaned for tomorrow. He then flicked off the television, turned off the bedside lamp, and slid under the covers next to his grandson. Morty gave him as much room as he could, shifting to the very edge of the bed and curling up with his back facing him, all too aware of his lack of underwear as he pulled Rick’s sweater down over his legs as far as it would go. 

He tried to sleep. It was quiet, and his grandfather’s breathing was steady and slow, and the gentle thrum of nighttime traffic outside the window was almost soothing, but he was still just too cold. He’d drift off for a few minutes only to shake himself awake, unable to handle the slowed heart rate and core temperature drop of sleep in the frigid room, even wrapped up in the sweater and blanket. This happened several times, and eventually, when his own chattering teeth snapped him into glacial wakefulness, Rick sighed out in sharp aggravation behind him. He froze. 

“Morty.”

Morty tucked his chin behind his knees. “Yeah, Rick?”

“You’re keeping me up. Get over here so I can fucking sleep.”

Rick was a quiet sort of irritated that was somehow far worse than strident exasperation. Morty could tell he was genuinely tired, and he didn’t want to argue with him, but he couldn’t stop himself from trying. He wrung his hands together through the overlong sleeves of Rick’s sweater, and said, “Oh, um, I-I-I don’t think - I mean, I don’t want to -”

Rick didn’t even bother asking again, and grabbed him about the waist to drag him across the mattress and lay him with his back flush against his side. Morty yelped, tensing and ducking his face farther into his knees, but Rick only tucked the covers more firmly around him and settled back against the pillows with an arm under his shoulders.

“Better, baby?” 

Morty bit his lip and blushed in the dark, because it was. Rick threw heat like an old cast iron radiator, warming the center of the bed into something sunbaked and sedative, and it was a welcome relief after the many hours of cold he’d been subjected to today. He gave a tiny nod, and said in an even smaller voice, “Yes, grandpa Rick.” 

Rick tightened his arm around him, and said against the top of his head, “Good. Now go the fuck to sleep, sweetheart.”

Morty pinched his eyes shut against the spike of heat in his stomach, unsure what it meant, but unable to resist relaxing into the caldera dip of the bed by his grandfather’s side. 

He thought it’d take him hours to fall asleep given the nervous racing of his heart, but he dropped off within five minutes. 

…

Morty woke to the desperate need to urinate. 

He scrambled to his feet, terrified of having an accident with Rick right next to him, only to find him absent, the covers turned down on his side of the bed. He squinted his eyes, letting them adjust to the dark, and realized a ribbon of light was resting upon the floor. He tiptoed over it, following it to the bathroom, where the door was slightly ajar. 

He was going to knock, to ask if he could please use the restroom, but his hand stilled in midair when he heard his grandfather’s low, breathless voice carry through the gap in the door. 

“Baby, fuck, baby, _my sweet baby_ , god, shit, _fuck_.”

Morty stopped. His mind, his heart, his lungs, everything stopped. He could hear it, beneath Rick’s ragged panting and cross cursing, the rough, desperate whisper of skin on skin, the soft susurration of self-pleasure. He knew what Rick was doing before he understood, the blind incomprehension of unwanted discovery. He knew he needed to pad back to bed and pretend he’d heard nothing, and wait for Rick to return before he got up to relieve himself. He knew, and still he stood at the door, listening in semi-dark silence. 

“God fucking help me, sweetie, Jesus, just let me - just let me - fuck, _fuck_ \- _Morty, Morty, Morty_ -”

Morty gasped, and Rick looked up in the circular mirror, and for a moment, clear and bright as stars hanging in a dark, cold night, they saw one another. Rick grasped the edge of the sink brutally, eyes falling almost shut as he groaned, a cruel, unclean, calescent sound, and Morty fell back against the drawers of water behind him. Over the rush of blood in his head, he heard his grandfather catch his breath by degrees, before sighing out slow as a devil’s ascent to heaven. 

The sink ran. The door fell open. Rick stepped out, and stared down at him, a saturnine silhouette ringlit and looming so tall Morty cowered beneath him in the icy, still air of their hotel room. 

“Go to the bathroom, Morty,” Rick told him quietly.

Morty crumbled. A noise of ruin ripped itself from deep inside the birdcage of his ribs, a whimper of world-ending, a wrecked, wretched little whine. He ducked past Rick into the bathroom, and slammed the door shut behind himself, and sank to the floor in tears. 

He didn’t know how long he cried, but Rick let him take as long as he needed. 

Eventually, his shock could no longer suppress his need to go to the bathroom, and he stumbled up onto numb feet to do what he’d gotten up for in the first place. He washed his hands, and he stood on the frosted mosaic tiles, and he saw himself in the mirror. Red eyed and pale faced in an oversized, faded blue sweater and nothing else, a little boy from Earth, Dimension C-137, so far away from home he couldn’t make sense of the distance. A million miles, ten million miles, a hundred million miles. It didn’t matter. Rick made distance obsolete. Rick made time stand still. Rick made entire universes into disposable, experimental playgrounds, and he was just along for the ride. 

Rick knew everything, and he knew nothing, and he was all alone out here, except for him. 

It was too cold to sit in the bathroom all night. He told himself that as he opened the bathroom door and flicked off the light. He walked over to the bed, where his grandfather was sat on the side’s edge, smoking a cigarette in the dark. Rick snuffed his Newport out in the ashtray on the nightstand as he approached, and regarded him for a long, quiescent moment. He watched him shiver and shake and shy at the foot of the bed, until finally, he spoke, the softest thing Morty had ever heard come out of his mouth. 

“Come here, baby.”

Morty sobbed a little, but he did as he was told. Residual smoke lingered in the air as Rick took hold of his arms and gently pulled him to stand between his open knees, to cup his face in one hand as he rested the other on his waist, spreading his fingers over the soft fabric of his sweater, ever so slightly grazing it against the tender skin beneath. Morty shuddered, and Rick shushed him. 

“Shh, shh, baby. I ain’t gonna hurt you, I-I promise, sweetie, I promise. It’s okay, it’s gonna - we’re just gonna lay back down, and go back to sleep, o-okay?”

Morty nodded against his grandfather’s hand, mouth a little moue of misery, and Rick sighed out echoes of smoke and Southern Comfort over his face. “That’s a - there’s my good boy. C’mon, c’mere, lay down with me, Morty. Lemme warm you up, sweetie, you’re freezing.”

Morty was freezing, inside and out, and he let Rick pull him into bed, to lay back and place him upon his chest. Rick hiked one of his grandson’s legs up over his thighs, and settled his curly head under his chin, and pulled the covers up around them tight. He cradled the back of his head, and stroked up and down his chilled arm, and breathed balsam and bittersweet against his hair, “That’s it, just go to sleep, baby. N-nothing’s gonna happen tonight - I won’t - not tonight, not until you - hey, shh, just go back to sleep - it’s - it’s just a dream, okay, sweetheart? It’s okay, shh, it’s okay, it’s okay, grandpa’s got you, baby, grandpa’s here.” 

Morty cried against his chest, because _‘not tonight’_ meant _‘some other night,’_ and he didn’t know what else to do but cry and let himself be told it was just a dream. Rick could do anything, so he could make that the truth if he wanted to, couldn’t he? Morty was tired, and he was cold, and he was so alone, and Rick was soothing and warm and terribly, yearningly, frightfully _there_ , and because it had to be, because he couldn’t deal with anything else, it was just a bad dream. 

April drew to a close, and it was one hundred fifty eight days until his thirteenth birthday, and it was just a very bad dream.

He fell back asleep to the sound of his grandfather’s gentle, husky voice telling him it was okay, and if Rick had just stopped there, that’s all it would have been.

He didn’t, though. 

He’d made up his mind months ago, and the abyss of his affection was just something his grandson was going to have to learn to live with. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The other half of the gift art from @innstitches, Jesus lord it's so beautiful and I can't say thank you enough, but I'll keep trying. 
> 
> I'm not usually one for warnings, but that scene was actually a bit upsetting for me to write, so it seemed prudent in this case. I hope it was well placed. 
> 
> So, uh, just to canvass the room, is my interpretation of Rick like, insanely sexy, or is that just me? Because ah, that bathtub scene, like - Jesus, I thought writing Whisky & Water got me a little bothered, but _holy shit._ I didn't know how goddamn good slowburn could be until I wrote that. 
> 
> We're really getting into the thick of it, now. I'm so excited to get this story written after having it roll around in my head for so long; I've actually got it all planned out for once, and it's just flowing so well. This is truly a joy to write, and I hope it's a pleasure to read, as well. Feedback is always appreciated; a lot of comments actually do sway some of my storytelling decisions and character choices, and it's so encouraging to hear that other people enjoy this and are just as excited to read it as I am to write it. 
> 
> Drop me a kudo or a comment if you've got the time, and thank you so much for reading :)
> 
> Signing off,
> 
> firstbornking


	3. May

They overslept. 

“Ahh, fuck. G-get up, Morty. C’mon, we gotta go - get going before these fishfuckers try to charge me for another night.”

Morty yawned, bracing his hands behind his neck as he butterflied his arms and bowed his back against the bed in a lavish stretch. He rubbed at his eyes with the fabric of Rick’s sweater sleeves falling over his fingertips, dragging himself up from the middle of a deep sleep. “Wh-what time is it?”

“Time to _go_ , Morty. Quit rolling around in bed like a goddamn pavement princess and get your clothes on already, Jesus Christ.”

Folded clothes were tossed against his chest, and Morty frowned. He didn’t know what a pavement princess was, but he could tell it wasn’t a nice thing to be called. He sat up drowsily, and saw Rick sat at the foot of the bed lacing up his boots, his brittle-blue hair wild and face deeply pillow lined as if he’d slept exceptionally well for a good long while. 

“Where are we going, Rick?”

Rick cast him a caustic glare, voice dripping with carbolic acid as he snapped, “That water has definitely worn off by now, so if you could stop with the incessant fucking questions, I’d _really_ appreciate it, Morty.” 

Morty recoiled with a sleepy, confused little whine, unprepared for his grandfather’s intense irritation so soon upon waking. He went to push the blanket down, only to blush like a timid daybreak when he realized the sweater was rucked up high around his waist, leaving everything that mattered completely uncovered. He thought about Rick holding him against his chest like this, and a bitter, black gall gnashed at his insides as he remembered last night. 

_“- it’s just a dream, okay, sweetheart? -”_

He swallowed, but his mouth was dry as a technical manual and twice as thick and there wasn’t enough saliva to moisten the arid catch in the back of his throat. His stomach growled, and his head hurt, and without Rick emanating heat right next to him, the searing cold was swiftly settling back into his skin. Rick wasn’t the only one who could be irritable first thing in the morning. 

“Well, I’m _sorry_ y-y-you’re going through withdrawal because you got a full night’s sleep for once, Rick, but if the answer is anything other than - than breakfast and a coatstore, then _I don't wanna go_.”

Rick slowly looked back at him over his shoulder with parted lips and a raised brow, and Morty turned from him in a huff, flicking out the crisp folds of his yellow shirt in annoyance.

“Well, goddamn, baby,” Rick said, soft with surprise, bad mood melting into a mellow amusement that set Morty’s face on fire. He stood and stepped around the side of the bed, to tower above his grandson and stare down at him with serrated affection as he asked, “Aren’t you being cute today?”

Morty shrank down into his knees, but said, “Sh-shut up, Rick.”

Rick blinked, before his lips curled back into a gamesome smirk, dull yellow teeth glinting in the soft light of late morning gamboling in between the gap in the curtains. He leaned down to grab hold of the comforter where it rested around Morty’s waist, and told him, sly and sportive, “Tell me to shut up again, Morty. G’on a-a-and say it to my face, sweetie. I fucking _dare_ you.”

Morty clenched the comforter tight in his hands, sure he shouldn’t take the bait but so deeply upset with his grandfather he couldn’t talk himself out of it fast enough. He looked directly up into his grandfather’s stupid, smirking face, and he said again, a little firmer, “ _Shut up_ , Rick.” 

Rick’s eyes flashed like river rapids refracting sunlight, and he wrested the blanket out of his grandson’s hands with a long, smooth snap of his arms. Morty shouted at the sudden rush of frosty air against and between his legs, and he dropped his shirt to reach back out for the covers, only for Rick to toss them to the floor. He started pulling his sweater over his grandson’s head, just as he’d done with Morty’s shirt last night, but without all the harried urgency of a brain hemorrhage hastening his hands. 

“Rick! H-hey, stop, stop! It’s - _stop it_ \- i-it’s too cold!” Morty tried to yank the sweater back down over himself, but Rick had it bunched up under his armpits and chin as he tried, with purposeful inefficiency, to work it over his head.

“It sure is,” Rick agreed, chuckling at his grandson’s bootless, easily broadsided struggles. His warm fingers brushed against the intercostal spaces between Morty’s uppermost true ribs as he said, “So I need this back, Morty. Give it here, now, c’mon. Y-you don’t need it anymore, do you?” 

A skirl of skittish laughter forced its way out of Morty’s throat, a bright little bubble of involuntary sound, and Rick paused for two heartbeats before his smirk transformed into a wicked grin. Morty’s ears went scarlet, his stomach flipping like a paper football across a school desk in study hall as Rick asked the last question he wanted to hear from him right now. 

“Are you ticklish, baby?”

Morty didn’t even bother trying to say no, because it was excruciatingly obvious and the spark of delighted discovery in Rick’s eyes was impossible to miss. He threw his hands up, squirming now to get out of the sweater as fast as possible instead of keep it on, stammering out quickly, “Y-y-y-you c-can have it, you can h-have it b-back, Rick, just don’t - no, no, _no_ -”

Rick drummed his fingers over the little ravines between his ribs, and Morty cut off into a forced, uncomfortable giggle. He turned his head to the side, covering his mouth with both hands and pinching his eyes shut, and tried to throw himself back into the pillows to escape Rick’s spiderlike touch; his grandfather just followed him down to the bed, bracing a knee on the edge and fastening him down with a hand on his sternum. Rick crept his fingertips up into the hollows of his armpits, grazing over the unbearably sensitive acreage of axilla skin, and his grin took on a thrilled edge when Morty’s giggle climbed sharply into a porch full of windchimes caught up in a rainstorm. 

“Oh, you _are_ ,” Rick said, voice dark with satisfaction, and a static snow of panic paneled Morty’s mind. His chest flittered with a charm of hummingbirds, his blood chasing quick and hot through his veins heedless of the hard chill in the room. He whined through his giggle, high and harrassed and apprehensive, and when Rick just chuckled down at him roguishly, dread set into his bones like a disease of hypersensitivity.

_He hated being tickled._

“No, no, no, no, no, _no, no, no!_ ” he begged, unable to stress that one little syllable of refusal hard enough, loud enough, fast enough. His voice went sharp and shrill, his muscles vellicating under Rick’s hand as it sketched lightly across his stomach, into the pygmy dip of his belly button, over his external obliques and back up between his ribs. Morty remembered the last time he’d been tickled, and he started to hyperventilate through his unpleasant peals of compulsory laughter.

“Stop, stop, no - _haha_ \- no! No, Rick! Don’t - don’t - _hahaha_ \- please, _no!”_

His arms flailed, his fingers scrabbling into little fists to beat against Rick’s chest, to push him away with all his strength, but Rick just pulled the sweater at his chin over his head to twist and bind about his forearms. He pinned them against the headboard with one hand, a swiftly formed shackle of soft cloth crossing his hands and fixing them in place, and Morty gasped, his giggles intensifying into petrified shrieks. 

He couldn’t catch his breath. The horrible pinch of perceived suffocation pressed in on his lungs and drove him into a blind panic; he kicked his legs, a baby gazelle hopelessly caught in the throat clamp of some watchful predator, thrashing its hindquarters about in a desperate bid for air. Rick only tossed a long leg over his knees, bending it at his side and restraining him fully, and he set to laying him out in lavender with featherlike fingertips skimming, skipping, scraping, scratching, scrolling over every inch of his tender, ticklish skin.

It was _pure torture_.

Tears pricked at his eyes. His abdomen ached, his lungs burned, his face ripped open into a rictus of convulsive cackling, and he just wanted it to _stop_. He could think of nothing beyond the all-consuming need for this ordeal to just be over; his nudity didn’t matter, last night didn’t matter, his confusion and his fear and his sense of self-preservation screaming at him in holy terror did not matter. All that mattered was begging Rick to _please just stop_. 

“N-no - _heh - haha_ \- no more! It - it hurts, Rick, i-it r-really, really - _haha!_ \- hurts! Stop, stop, _stop, please! It hurts!_ ”

“Really, Morty?” Rick asked, deeply gratified with his grandson’s frantic pleading. He traced his fingers into the shallow depression at the back of Morty’s knee, and chuckled lowly when he screeched with laughter and flexed his entire body up against him, teasing soft and mean, “It - it sure don’t sound like it does, sweetie. Sounds like you’re having a good - just a - a great fucking time.” 

Morty threw his head to the side with a sparkling sob, a flashover of anger lighting up his spine only to die back down into more helpless laughter. For him, that was the worst part about being tickled; the facsimile of enjoyment, his body forced to display all the hallmarks of happiness even as he panicked and pleaded and prayed for it to stop. The stark misalignment of his physical response to how he actually felt was a hateful, terrifying thing, and he cried as he laughed out hysterically, “I’m not, I’m - _hah!_ \- not! Stop it, pl-please - I’ll - _heh!_ \- I’ll do _\- I’ll do anything,_ Rick, _please!_ ” 

Rick danced his uneven nails up the outside of his thigh, across his hip, back over his heaving stomach, and asked smooth-tongued and toothsome, “Anything, baby?”

Morty didn’t even consider his answer for a second. “Anything, anything! Ju-just stop, Rick, please, _I’m begging you!_ No more! It hurts - you - _hahaha!_ \- you’re _hurting me_ , st-stop it!”

“Well, alright,” Rick said, letting his hand come to a rest at his waist as he finished lightly, “but you better believe I’m gonna hold you to that, sweetheart.”

Morty gasped in great, shuddery lungfuls of crisp, cool air beneath him. He sank back against the mattress in exhaustion, the breathing space allotted him so appreciated it took a minute for awareness to seep back in. He panted, red-faced and shaking, and Rick held his arms above his head and stroked his thumb over his superior iliac spine and stared down at him in silence. 

When Morty regained his capacity for critical thought, he almost wanted to go back to not being able to think at all. He pulled experimentally against Rick’s grip on his hands, and a hard rush of fear blindsided him when it didn’t give in the slightest. He swallowed thickly, even thirstier now than he’d been when he’d first woken up, and he said, “Let me go, Rick.”

Rick hitched his arms up a little higher, and said with the air of a cat toying with a mouse, “And why should I do that, Morty?”

“Be-because I -” Morty shivered as his grandfather’s hand on his hip spread out and pressed more firmly against his flesh, touch so far from ticklish now, and he whispered timidly, “- I need to get dressed, Rick.”

Rick glanced over at the clothes beside them, and back down at his grandson’s naked body beneath him with absolutely no attempt to hide his enjoyment, and Morty wanted to curl up in a crawlspace somewhere and die like a wounded dog. “You weren’t in any hurry before, M-Morty. Seemed pretty content to lay here in nothing but my sweater an-and snap at me like a spoiled fucking brat.” 

Even though Rick’s tone was far from angry, Morty flinched. He licked his lips nervously, and he saw Rick watch him lick his lips, and his heavy lidded, hungry eyes were not making it any easier to tell himself that last night was nothing but a bad dream. He tugged on his arms again, saying in a voice on the verge of a soft breakdown, “Pl-please let me go, R-Rick. You - you’re really scaring me.” 

Rick swiped his thumb over his hip once, twice, three times, watching the rapid rise and fall of his rail thin chest, listening to the frightened tempo of his fragile breathing, feeling the way his skin trembled beneath his intemperate touch, before finally, he sighed and let him go. He stood from the bed, running a hand back through his unruly hair. 

“You’re right, Morty,” he said, bending down to pick up his lab coat and slide it on as Morty quickly freed his arms from the twisted fabric of the sweater and sat up in a shivering ball in the center of the empty bed. “I’m - I’m just burning thunderwood ‘cause I need to tie one the fuck on. W-we’ll go get breakfast in a minute. I just gotta hit up a _-errp-_ a bottleshop first, okay?”

Morty watched him as he shrugged his lab coat on, patting over his pockets to make sure he had his keys and portal gun and empty flask, yawning and scratching at the stubble under his jaw and glancing around the room to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything important. It was all so blandly casual Morty almost had to second guess why he felt so uneasy, but he could still feel the echoes of fingertips fondling his flesh, and he knew he was right to feel the way he did. He turned from his grandfather to stiffly slip his clothes on with a ducked head and awkward elbows, trying not to think of anything beyond covering himself up. 

Rick scrutinized his every move from where he stood at the foot of the bed, and Morty knew this was inappropriate on at least five different levels. Family wasn’t supposed to look at family the way Rick looked at him. He knew that. He knew that no one should touch him the way Rick had just touched him, but at the same time, he knew that Rick put the ever loving fear of god in him like no one else ever had, and he didn’t know how to object to what had just happened.

He thought of his sister promising Rick she wouldn't tell mom how often Rick kept him out; his father slumping over the kitchen table in defeat and hopelessly apologizing to his wife later that night for upsetting her with his complaints about her father; his mother so happy her son and her dad were getting along that she cried tears of joy and said with the most sincerity he’d ever heard from her that she hoped they continued to do things together. 

He thought of Rick telling him that everyone had left him alone, and that he wasn’t going to, and Morty was as a shining little star, lost from view through a dark, indivisible canopy of trees. 

As he was numbly tying his shoes over the edge of the bed, Rick walked around to him, saying, “No, Morty, th-that’s not how you - you’re doing it wrong. They’re just gonna come undone again that way, and you’ll - then we’ll be doing this all over again tonight, is that what you want?”

He took a knee on the floor next to his grandson’s feet, and set one of them on his thigh. Morty watched him through a delusory haze as he took hold of the laces and demonstrated calmly, “It’s - look, you go right over left, and then left over right. Y-you see how - here, both the ends come out the bottom of this loop, and the other two come out of the top of this one? The bow’ll sit crosswise this way, and it’ll hold a lot better than a granny knot.”

Rick set his foot down, and looked up at him with a gesture to his untied shoe. “You do it, now, Morty.”

Morty looked down at him with folded back fright, terror packed up into little boxes and stored in the attic until he could figure out how to display it properly in his home. Rick eyed him expectantly, and he leaned down to repeat on his other shoe what he’d just seen him do. It was a simple mistake he’d been making, but he saw it now, and his bow came out looking the same as his grandfather’s. 

“L-l-look at that, Morty, you _can_ learn,” Rick said, snide but strangely sweet, as he stood and walked over to the hotel door. “I just gotta teach you every single fucking thing, because apparently no one else could be bothered to give you even the bare goddamn minimum of instruction, M-Morty.” 

He didn’t exactly sound like he hated that, and Morty cowered under the keen glint of commitment in his eyes. Morty tapped the toes of his sneakers on the saxony carpet to settle his feet in them, and as he got up, Rick said, “Put my sweater back on, Morty. You can wear it until we get you a coat. I should've told you to bring one - th-that’s my bad. I’ll remember you can't handle the cold next time, baby.”

Rick pulled out his pack of Newports and lit one up as he opened the hotel door. It was snowing outside, a powdery black snow full of the soot of some nearby forest fire, and a frostbitten wind stole into the room, grey snowflake flurries flighting upon its frigid edges. Morty shook as he pulled Rick's sweater on and hugged himself tight, and when Rick started striding down the loggia to the hotel lobby trailing smoke in his wake, he tripped over his feet to run along after him.

He didn’t know what else to do.

…

The foreman got what Rick had coming to him.

Morty stood from the vantage point of a suspended catwalk connecting two ellipsoid standpipes, bundled up in a tuscan sun quilted jacket and fur lined trapper hat. He shoved his hands deep in his puffy pockets, his nose and cheeks chapped raw in the cold of what passed for summer on this planet, as he watched his grandfather circle and cheap shot the Whiteblood directly in his sensory nares. He fell to his knees, wrestling for oxygen with fully unfurled gills plated out to catch all the snow they could, his nose dripping semi-transparent blood into a suncup formed by the weak, irregular light peeking through the charcoal clouds. 

Rick kicked him viciously in the side with what Morty knew was a steel toed boot, and he shivered with a frown. He called down to him, “R-Rick, isn’t - that’s enough, isn’t it? He already -”

Rick drove his foot into the Ice-Nine Overseer’s exposed stomach again and again and again, not even grunting as he stomped his soft underbelly with one evenly timed strike after another. Morty stared down on the scene silently, a strange calm washing over him. He was sitting on the living room couch at home, nestled between his parents watching an R-rated movie. A clip had come on they’d told him to cover his eyes for, but his curiosity had gotten the better of him and he’d peeked through his fingers to see what they thought he was too young and too scared to see. It would flash unpleasantly in his mind as he tried to fall asleep that night, but he’d be able to tell himself it was all fake, actors and sound design and special effects, and he’d get over it. 

Except this was a Whiteblood from the city of Barchan on Daco-Daco, and his name was Frio, and he fed his creepshaws leftovers from his lunch while petting them lovingly, and Morty had seen a picture of his brace-faced son and camera-shy daughter at a birthday party on his office desk, and he’d told Morty his wife’s favorite flowers were snowsplashes and that they only bloomed during blizzards. 

Morty could hear the squelch of his internal organs rupturing as he coughed up blood devoid of hemoglobin, and he shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. He shook as a stiff mistral blew across the catwalk and bit at his nose. He heard Frio say something to Rick, but he couldn’t make it out over the wind whipping around his ears.

Rick didn’t respond to whatever Frio had said. He just kept kicking him squarely in his stomach, and Morty tried again, distant and benumbed, “Grandpa Rick, hasn’t he, ah - d-don’t you think he’s learned his lesson? He’s - oh, he’s already gonna have to go to the hospital.”

Rick kicked him in his finned shoulder, and once he was on his back, he connected the toe of his boot soundly with the side of his head with a solid _snap_ that carried the twenty meters up to where Morty stood. Frio went completely still, and Rick breathed a little heavier than usual for a minute, before he cast his eyes up at his grandson and shouted over the wind, “You can come down now, sweetie!”

Morty nodded, trembling in the wintry gusts of air, and crossed the catwalk to descend the water tower’s maintenance ladder. Rick was right there at the base when he made it down, and helped him the last few feet to the ground. Morty shook, and Rick wrapped an arm around his shoulders, tugging him close against his side as he guided him back to the ship. 

“Sh-sh-shouldn’t we call an ambulance, Rick?” Morty asked softly, looking at Frio as they walked by him. He didn’t seem to be breathing, but Morty couldn’t really tell given his foreign physiology. 

Rick looked between his grandson and the man he’d just beaten like a rented mule, and asked in affectionate amusement, “D’you really want me to, baby?”

Morty thought of the way Frio had waved at him and asked him if he wanted to be called anything besides ‘Sanchez’s boy,’ and he nodded, unable to take his eyes off of his preternaturally still body. “Please, Rick. He’s got an anniversary coming up, a-and he already picked out the gift. It’s a really pretty necklace with her f-favorite flower on the pendant.”

Rick chuckled as he slid his phone out of his back pocket. “Jeez, did he tell you his entire life story over lunch yesterday? What a fucking blowhard.”

Rick called in the assault and its location, and jumped up into the spaceship parked behind the southern standpipe. Morty looked past him to where the passenger seat was filled flush to the foam backed headliner with cubes of ice that swirled inside like miniature typhoons, and to the backseat which was packed with ice plows, pike poles, chisels, tongs and augers. He stood beside the driver’s side door in confusion, until Rick looked at him with a pat on his knee and said, “What’re you waiting for? C’mon, Morty, you made me call the fucking cops on myself; hop in so we can get off of this godforsaken ice rock. Th-they don’t even have - I mean, fucking _krillcakes?_ Are you kidding me? Jesus, _fuck_ this place.” 

Morty knocked his hands together, biting his lower lip as Rick stared down at him, waiting. A blizzard was brewing on the horizon, and he heard faint sirens in the distance, and Frio wasn’t moving on the steel grated industrial deck behind them, snow steadily building up along the shimmery lilac scales of the side of his face. He swallowed, but he clambered up into his grandfather’s lap without another word.

Rick slid his hand under the waxed cotton shell of the coat he’d just bought for him, to rest close to his skin through his thin t-shirt, and Morty kept quiet as he fired up the thrusters to full throttle to escape Daco-Daco’s intense atmospheric activity. 

It was just the two of them, again, all alone in the vast emptiness of outer space. 

From the surface of planets, stars seemed densely packed together, twinkling close to each other as one second to the next, but in reality, they were all thousands and thousands of miles apart, with immense tracts of nothingness between them. There were plumes of irradiated gas, particles of baryonic matter, the surfeit aether of creation, but mostly it was lonely, ever accelerating dark energy as far as the eye could see. He was growing accustomed to watching the vacuity of space pass him by, but the sequestering silence was still too much for him to handle. 

He dipped his face behind his high cadet collar and asked, with a politeness borne of overwhelmed exhaustion, “May I please listen to the radio, Rick?”

Rick laughed quietly against his hat, keeping his eyes on the windshield as he teased him for his formality, saying, “You most certainly fucking may, Morty.” 

Morty switched it on, and spent a few minutes surfing through peculiar avant-garde percussion pieces and what sounded like a giraffe classically trained in baroque opera, before he gave up and asked, “Rick, how do - how do I get it to play channels from Earth?”

Rick brushed his hand over his as he pressed the correct sequence of buttons to pick up Earth’s simplex communication radio networks, and Morty felt a chill despite the three inches of poly fill encasing him, but he didn’t draw his hand back from the radio tuner. A country channel came through clearly, but Rick grumbled behind him, so he hit seek again. The exacting enunciation of someone well-practiced at reading a teleprompter rang through the cabin, and Rick scoffed with an audible roll of his eyes, so he kept searching. 

_“- your wish, I’ll be your fantasy. I’ll be your hope, I’ll be your love, be everything that you need. I love you more with every breath, truly, madly, deeply do -”_

He drew his hand back, and he listened, humming softly along. Rick snickered behind him, saying, “Are you - are you s-serious, Morty?” 

Morty ignored him, mouthing the lyrics to himself as he held his hands in his lap. Rick’s derisive laughter soon died down, and he watched his grandson’s mouth move, tilting his head in curiosity. Morty knew every word, every peak and valley of the harmony, even the non-verbal vocalizations, and he closed his eyes as he sang silently and tapped his hands on his knees in time with the song. 

_“- I want to stand with you on a mountain, I want to bathe with you in a sea, I want to lay like this forever, until the sky falls down on me -”_

Rick stroked his fingers over Morty’s shirt, and Morty tried to focus on the sweetly sentimental guitar instead of how uncomfortable his grandfather’s touch made him feel. Even though he kept his eyes closed, he knew Rick was watching him. Rick was always watching him, greedy magpie eyes stealing up facts about him like shiny screws and silver rings to decorate some closely guarded nest. He liked flowers; he was good at checkers; he paid attention to Shakespeare in English class; he was ticklish and he hated it; he knew all the lyrics to this song. Rick collected every bit and piece of him, no matter how trivial, and Morty was beginning to see it was all in the pursuit of better learning how to manipulate him into the position he was in right this second; sat in his lap and not even wondering how he got here. 

_“- make you want to cry the tears of joy for all the pleasure and the_ _certainty, that we’re surrounded by the comfort and protection of the highest power, in lonely hours, the tears devour you -”_

The verses led into the chorus repeating, lovesome and achingly softhearted, and the song played itself out in a flourish of ornamental guitar work and romantic vocals. Rick turned the volume down on the radio presenter to ask without a hint of harassment, “How do you know that song, Morty?”

Morty looked out the windshield at the wide open nothing before them, and found that he didn’t want to answer. Rick’s eyes were heavy on him, however, his hand right there on his stomach, and he forced himself to say, “It, um, it played at my parents’ - dad told me it played at their prom. They used to - back when I was little, they would put it on and - and they would dance to it in the kitchen sometimes, Rick.”

Rick looked at the same empty vista as him, spreading his fingers out wide to span the entire width of his abdomen. “You’re still little, Morty.”

He was, but Rick was the only one who made him feel like that was a dangerous thing to be, right here in his lap and out there in the universe. He clutched his hands together, and he kept talking, unsure of where he was going, but unable to stop himself. 

“Y’know, they - they used to go on dates. Every Friday night, they’d get me and Summer a babysitter, an-and they’d go out to a movie or a play or-or-or just for a walk in a park or something and - and th-they would always come home laughing. I remember that, because it always woke me up. Them laughing downstairs.”

Rick kept the ship steady with one hand, and he held him around the middle with the other, and he listened in silence. 

“They don’t do that anymore. All I hear now is them fighting - and it’s all - it’s all about you, Rick. It’s _always_ about you. Dad says you’re rude, and y-y-you don’t help out around the house, and you’re _‘putting this family’s safety in jeopardy,’_ and he’s _not wrong_ , but mom says he’s being - that he’s jealous of you and he’s insensitive a-a-and he’s trying to make you leave when you only just came back - and - th-they used to get along so much better, R-Rick. They really, really did. It wasn’t - sure, it wasn’t perfect, but they used to say _‘I love you’_ to each other every - every single day. Mom used to get along with dad b-before you - she used to like him more - she used to -”

Morty gripped his hands together so hard it hurt, a seed that had been planted months ago finally germinating and breaking through the soil to see the light of day, and his lower lip buckled as he sobbed out, small and broken and gutted with anguish, “She used to like _me_ , Rick.” 

Tears tore down his face, stinging over his windburnt skin, so quick and hot and plentiful he didn’t even bother trying to wipe them away. Rick just maintained his flight course and continued petting at his stomach as he cried and went on in the stifling, recycled air of the cabin, his words punctuated with sharp, agonized gasps, “She doesn’t - god, she _nuh_ -never even asks about me any-anymore, Rick. She doesn’t ask me a- _buh -_ about my grades, or-or-or what games I’m playing, or if I’ve made any f-friends at school. It’s only ever what I’ve been doing with _you_ , and w-when I _tuh_ -tell her - when I tell her the places you’ve taken me, the things you’ve shown me - I-I-I can tell that she hates me _so much_ , grandpa R-Rick.” 

Rick didn’t shush him. Rick didn’t tell him he was wrong. Rick just piloted the ship and let him cry hopelessly in his lap.

“Y-y-you spend more time with me th-than you - than you ever did with her, and she _hates me_ for it, I-I-I know she does. Even Summer is - she’s jealous of me o-over _this_ \- over _you_ , Rick, and I - I don’t know what to _do_. Mom and dad are gonna - they’re gonna break up the way th-things are going now, I just know it, and then - then I won’t even have - I’ll just have -” his throat closed up with thick sobs, and he couldn’t say it. He didn’t have to, though, because Rick hummed in agreement and said it for him.

“You’ll just have me, baby.” 

He sounded so satisfied, so cruelly pleased with that idea Morty quivered all the way to his core, and he went still when Rick leaned his head back against the headrest and sighed out, “ _Fuck_ , I-I like that, Morty.”

There was something in the dark, dyspneic edge to his voice that reminded Morty of the way Frank Palicky had asked him if he was going to scream like a little girl, and he broke out in gooseflesh beneath his brand new winter coat. He knew better than to ask Rick what he meant. He stared out at the empty, black vista before them, tears streaming silently down his face as Rick slipped the very tips of his fingers up under his shirt to glance over the porcelain skin just beneath his belly button, and Morty shook again. 

“I don’t, Rick,” he said, soft as dappled shade playing over running water, an insubstantial statement of fact washed downstream and swiftly disregarded. “I r-really don’t.”

Rick inched his fingers up higher, and said simply, “I know, sweetie.”

Songs rambled on the radio, reticent sounds that Morty listened to but couldn’t hear. It all felt so unreal. He remembered last Christmas; the excitement of unwrapping a PlayStation 4, eating himself sick on candy canes and sugar cookies, the smell of spiked eggnog and the fir tree beside the TV and burning icy blue spruce candles, and it was so hard to imagine that Rick wasn’t there. 

Had that really only been four months ago? 

He’d traveled to other galaxies. He’d spoken to aliens so many times nonchalance had set in and he could just ask them how their day was going without stammering awe and fascination. He’d helped Rick steal and threaten and bribe his way into getting whatever he wanted, a constant fixture at his side, a permanent accessory in more than one sense of the word. 

He looked down at Rick’s feet, and he saw the pellucid blood coating the tip of his steel toed Doc Marten boot, and he felt cold as the hole love leaves when it fades away. 

“D’you, um,” he started, almost startling himself into speech, interlocking his fingers primly in his lap as a commercial for Full Tilt Ice Cream played in the background. “Do you know w-why I don’t like being tickled, Rick?” 

Rick didn’t think about it at all, answering with absolute surety, “Same reason you don’t like drugs, Morty. You’re scared of losing control of yourself.”

Morty frowned, because that was true, but that wasn’t the whole answer. “When I was seven, mom and dad and Summer were all - th-they were all tickling me in the living room. I kept telling them to - screaming at them to stop, but they wouldn’t. They kept laughing, and I kept struggling, and eventually I got - I slipped out of their hands, but - but I fell back onto the coffee table, and I shattered it. I had to go to the hospital to get the glass out of my shoulder, and th-they never tickled me again.”

Morty could feel Rick looking at his back as he asked, “Is that where those scars came from?”

Morty nodded, and said mildly, “You’d know that if you hadn’t abandoned your family, Rick.”

Rick stiffened, the gentle sweep of his fingers across Morty’s stomach stilling. Morty’s heart started to race, but he knew it wasn’t something he was ever going to apologize for saying. Rick didn’t know everything about him. He didn’t. 

Not yet.

Rick broke into a chuckle that made the hairs at the back of Morty’s neck stand on end, a sound of high cotton and rolling clover, buoyant and brilliant and shamelessly fond.

“Fuck, you can be so _sassy_ sometimes, sweetie,” he laughed, fully sliding his hand up under Morty's shirt, pulling him back to rest firmly against his chest. He kept steering one handed, kept his eyes on the path back home, chuckling warmly as he went on, “an-and shit, you’re so fucking _cute_ in this stupid, big ass coat. Y-you look like a goddamn Pomeranian, Morty, Jesus help me.”

_“- fucking help me, sweetie, Jesus, just let me -”_

Morty finally flinched, frantically scanning the ship’s interior, searching for an escape that didn’t exist. Rick pressed a button on the steering column to bring up a holographic screen on the windshield, which he tapped coordinates into and then swiped away, before drawing his arms around his grandson in a loose embrace. His voice dropped into that hypnotic hushing tone from last night, and Morty began to hyperventilate. 

“Shh, shhh, don’t be scared, baby. It’s - it’s gonna be okay. It’s not gonna be that bad, Morty, I promise, it won’t be - calm down, calm down, s-settle - hey, settle down for me, shh, now, shhh. It’s okay, it’s okay, I swear, baby, i-it’s gonna be okay.”

Rick slipped off his hat to speak against his hair, tossing it against the cubes of ice-nine beside them; Morty heard a crackling sound, and he looked over to see it go stiff with frost as soon as its fur touched one of their stone blue sides. Confusion cut through his panic for a brief second, and he said, “W-what - ?” 

“Y-yeah, you don’t wanna touch those without a pair of butyl gloves, M-Morty. Any unprotected contact with your skin and your blood’ll freeze through in like half a minute.”

Morty started to ask why they were precariously stacked right next to them, then, but as he opened his mouth he remembered the mirrored image of his grandfather’s face as he came hard groaning his name, and he started bawling hysterically instead. Rick set straight back to shushing him, telling him it was okay no less than a hundred times, voice so clear and calm and consistent that cognitive dissonance began to leech the lifeblood out of his panic attack. With his grandson weeping in his lap, Rick was as patient as a pit viper, as any predator whose success depended upon composure and persistence and long, careful planning. 

There was really only so long he could cry before he just couldn’t anymore, and Rick waited him out with ease. 

His sobs played themselves to their natural end, and Rick hugged him and stole both his hands up under his shirt to lay warm against his skin and whispered against the curls framing his ear, “There you go, there’s my good boy, that’s it, just calm down. It’s okay. Just - hey, shh, shh, that’s enough, now, that’s enough crying, just settle down. A-a-are you ready to listen to me, now, Morty?”

Morty was really too tired to do anything but listen, so he supposed he must be. He couldn’t even shiver as Rick’s fingers stroked up and down the bare skin of his sides, and Rick relaxed completely back into his seat. He sighed into his hair, and started speaking with low, soothing solidity, “Here’s what's gonna happen from here, baby. We’re gonna get home, I’m gonna park the ship, and then I’m - I’m gonna kiss you, okay, sweetie? Do you understand?”

Morty did, but he didn’t want to. Rick settled his hands on his hips and held onto them gently, and Morty was filled with a fantastic sense of thrownness, as if he were suspended in that place between stepping into and out of a portal, and he didn’t want to enter fully into this new dimension. He forced himself to play dumb, and asked, “You mean l-like on the forehead? Like my parents used to do?” 

Rick chuckled. “I think you know that's not what I mean, baby.”

Morty swallowed, and tried again, “... the cheek, then?”

Rick shifted him to the very back of his lap, and formed his hands to the slight curve of his hips, and told him with obscene directness, “I mean I'm going to hold you by your neck, and I’m going to lick into your mouth until you quit your bitching and fucking _moan for me_ , Morty. Do you want me to get any clearer, sweetheart?”

Morty choked, red as suffocation, and he whispered in horror, “God, Rick… _why?_ ”

“Because I want to, baby,” he said, matter-of-fact and self-assured, as if that really were a good enough reason to molest his grandson when they made it back to Earth.

 _“- only_ good reason _in the entire universe to do anything ever is because I feel like it -”_

By his own estimation, it was all the reason he needed.

Morty watched stars intermittently pass like road signs and billboards, and he said with soft, surreal fear, “... but _I_ don't want you to, grandpa Rick.” 

Rick sighed out over the top of his head, and said again, “I know, sweetie.”

Morty ducked his face back behind his collar, and he knew he'd be crying more if he had the energy, but he didn't. Rick was hatefully at ease behind him, heartbeat a slow, steady drum at his back, hands light and loose but still so heavy on his hips, and Morty wondered if this was something you could look up advice for online. ‘What to do when your intergalactic terrorist grandfather says he wants to kiss you?’ or ‘Help, my quasi-god of a grandpa is making moves on me!’

A little giggle blistered up from his throat, hot and hysterical, and Rick looked down on him curiously. “What’s so funny, Morty?”

Morty’s laughter took on a slightly unhinged edge, and he said, “I was just thinking about - that there’s - there’s nowhere I can go for help, is-is there, Rick?”

“Oh, baby,” Rick said, warm and deeply endeared, his arms drawing around him in a gradually tightening embrace as he answered in a cruel imitation of sympathy, “Of course not.”

They flew along in silence save for the murmur of the radio and the drone of cosmic background radiation, and Morty had never dreaded returning home more in his life.

…

Hours later, as they descended upon the sleepy outskirts of Seattle, Morty started to break down again.

“Please tell me you’re kidding, R-Rick. Please tell me this is a - a prank or something and you’re not going to - I mean, like this is - this is your idea of a really, really fucked up joke, right?”

Rick, who had been absently circling his thumbs over Morty’s knees and humming along to the saxophone solo in Gerry Rafferty’s _Baker Street_ playing softly on the radio, returned his attention to his grandson with a slightly surprised chuckle. 

“Did you just swear, Morty?” 

Morty clenched his hands up in the hem of his coat, which he’d been sweating in for over an hour now but couldn’t begin to even think of taking off, because that wasn’t what was important at all. “Yes, _I fucking did_ , Rick. Th-that’s hardly the issue here!”

Rick laughed harder, taking hold of the steering wheel to handle the landing manually. Autopilot was fine for cruising through smooth avenues of outer space, but parking in the garage required a defter touch. He turned the dial on the altitude window as he said with pleasant diversion, “You - Jesus, Morty, y-you’re _-uurp-_ you’re really not doing yourself any favors, here.” 

Morty’s back went rigid, a conduit of cornered energy with no chance for discharge in sight, and he said stiffly, “I’m scared, Rick. You’re scaring me so much right now, and I just want you to stop, so _please stop_.”

Rick depressed the thrust lever, slowing the ship down in preparation for landfall as the streetlights of their neighborhood came into focus below them. “I haven’t done anything scary yet, sweetie. I’d say I’m being pretty fucking considerate.”

A chill ran across Morty’s sweat damp skin as he asked with all the vigor of sweeping incredulity, “ _What?_ ” 

Rick shrugged, deploying the speed brakes to get under two hundred knots; they both swayed forward as the ship slowed precipitously just above their house, and Morty instinctively braced his hands on the center of the steering wheel, only to jump when the horn blared as soon as he did. Rick rolled his eyes and pulled him back against his chest, saying as he closed the flight detent spoilers, “I don’t have to warn you. I don’t have to wait. I don’t have to put up with all your fucking complaining, Morty. I-I could’ve just fucked you in that hotel last night, when you were clinging to me and mumbling my name in your sleep, but I didn’t, now, d-did I? Because I’m being _considerate_ , Morty.” 

Morty’s lungs cited a hazardous work environment and called it quits on him. In a tiny, breathless whisper, he asked again, “W-what?” 

“You heard me, baby,” Rick said coolly, focusing on opening the ailerons to forty degrees to bring them down safely to the driveway in front of the dormant Smith family home. It was late, and a gentle May mist was drizzling from the sky, and Morty didn’t know how to cope with the stark new reality Rick had just pushed him into. How was he supposed to respond to his grandfather telling him something so unspeakably vile? What was he supposed to say to something like that? 

The answer, of course, was nothing. There was no correct reaction for when your nigh-omnipotent grandfather told you he was thinking about fucking you. There was no stock reply, no instruction manual, nowhere to turn for outside counsel, support or guidance.

He just had to sit with it in terrified silence. 

They touchdowned smoothly, and Rick pressed the key fob dangling from the ignition to open the garage door. The ship rolled into the dark alcove, and Morty set to falling apart. Before they even came to a full stop, he started yanking on the door handle, but _of_ _course_ the child lock was engaged so it only protracted uselessly in his hand, and a military trench of nausea dug itself deep into his stomach. He banged frantically on the door card, beating his fists against its worn brown leather panel, flicking all the switches in a desperate attempt to get the damn thing to open, but _nothing worked_. 

As soon as Rick shifted to park and killed the engine, he snatched up his wrists and held them up and out in front of him, chiding him stoically, “That’s enough of that now, Morty.” 

Morty pulled against his grip, only to gasp when his grandfather’s hands threatened pain for one second before lightening back up to mere restraint. He went still, and Rick spoke down to him from on high with an air of entitlement so absolute it was breathtaking. 

“Lemme walk you through this, sweetie. I’m gonna kiss you for as long as I want, and you are going to _let me_ _do it_. When I’m done, I’ll let you go, and from there, w-we’ve got - there are two options after that, you - are you following me, baby?”

Morty stared at his wrists, so easily encircled by Rick’s hands. They looked very small, like his grandfather’s fingers could wrap around them twice over. He nodded silently.

“Good, now listen up. I could leave after this, just - portal away without a word, stop answering calls and sending your dad thinly veiled suggestions to just fucking off himself already in the family group chat, but what d’you think’ll happen if - if I do that, M-Morty?”

Morty swallowed, looking out into the dark garage filled with all of Rick’s half-unpacked possessions, and he said numbly, “Mom’ll be - mom w-would be really upset if you did that, Rick.” 

Rick gave a rumble of approval at his back, and said, “That’s right, sweetie. Jeez, you’re not that dumb at all, are you?”

Morty looked down at his lap, closing his eyes against the sting of yet another backhanded compliment. He really shouldn’t care if Rick thought he was stupid given his current position, but it still hurt. He remembered how nice it had felt when Rick told him he wasn’t that bad at checkers, and he hated himself for thinking of that right now.

“Now look, your mom will spiral into a legendary bender if I peace the fuck out on this whole reconnection thing. She’ll call out of work, and she’ll lay up in the bathtub blacked out for days, Morty, and she’ll have to get her stomach pumped with activated charcoal so she doesn’t die of alcohol poisoning, you understand?”

A clearcut crystal of a memory glimmered in Morty’s mind; his mother on a gray Good Friday morning, breath depressed and face pale and hands so very, very cold, and he snapped his eyes back open with a sharp, trembling inhale. Rick waited behind him, and he said painfully, because he did, “I-I-I understand, Rick.” 

“Th-there’s a - there’s my good boy,” Rick said, lowering their hands to rest on Morty’s thighs, easing up his grip to stroke lightly over the little ridges of his knuckles. Morty didn’t move, and he could feel Rick smile behind him. “Tell me, baby, how d’you think you’d feel seeing your mom like that?” 

Morty envisioned it easily with the help of past experiences; his mother’s blonde hair limp and snarled with vomit, head lolling back in a lifeless stupor; his father rinsing her skin with the handheld shower head, carrying her to bed with the pinched, hopeless eyes of a man who could do nothing but watch as the love of his life destroyed herself; the flashing lights of the ambulance oscillating into the living room and the sobersided paramedics with their bumblebee black and yellow gurney at the door. 

“Sad, Rick,” he said softly. “R-really sad, and - and so, so worried.”

Rick said nothing, and he had to think about it longer. He thought of what might go through his head. He’d think of this moment, of Rick telling him he was going to leave and that he knew this was going to happen, and his chest collapsed like fresh snow beaten by sunlight, a watery sob spilling up from the ice melting away inside of him. 

“I’d feel like it was m-my fault, Rick,” he cried, tired and aching, and he wanted to cover his face, but Rick’s rough palms were laid out over his hands, thumbs stroking over his wrists again and again, and he couldn’t move them at all. “It wouldn’t be, though. It w-wouldn’t be my fault. It - _it wouldn’t_.”

Rick stayed quiet, and Morty’s mind ran in circles. His mother slumped over the kitchen table, the neck of a bottle clutched in her hand; his mother crying in the master bedroom as _The Neverending Story_ played on repeat in the background; his mother looking at him without seeing him, drunkenly asking, _‘What was the last thing he said to you before he left, Morty?’_

His conviction fractured around the edges, and he asked in a thin voice seeking reassurance, “... it wouldn’t be, right, Rick?” 

“Oh, baby, of course it wouldn’t be,” Rick finally spoke, soothing against his hair, anesthetic in his ear. “The fact that your mom is all fucked up is not your fault, Morty. You’re not to blame for any of this, but y-y-you would blame yourself anyway, wouldn’t you, sweetie?”

Morty looked down at their hands, and said nothing. 

The house was quiet and still, and all he could hear was his grandfather’s even breathing behind him and the sound of his own panicked heartbeat filling the ship’s cabin, and he knew that Rick was right. 

He slumped in his grandfather’s lap, and he asked, “What’s - what’s the other option, Rick?” 

“I stay, baby,” Rick said, a ground bass of gratification that sent a chill down Morty’s spine. “You keep your mouth shut about this, I give you a little time to get used to the idea, and then I do it again.”

“... you mean kiss me again?”

“To start with, yeah.”

Morty shivered, sweat cold all across his body. It was obvious which option Rick preferred, but Morty still asked him, “D’you - do you want to stay, Rick?”

Rick drew his arms around him, constricting him through his puffy coat, and he answered with utter sincerity, “I do, baby. I’d miss you so fucking much if I left.”

“Oh,” Morty said, and it was just like the first time Rick had taken him out in this spaceship, when he'd told him he was always thinking of him. It hurt, but in that sweet way that made him want to feel the pain again. 

No one had ever told him that they would miss him before. 

“Which one do you want, Morty?” Rick asked, reaching up to grab the tassel attached to the zipper at his neck. “Do you want me to go?”

A shiver of aversion lanced through Morty, and he couldn't tell if it was from Rick beginning to unzip his coat, or at the thought of him leaving. It felt like both. Rick pulled the zipper down tooth by tooth, the sound hideously loud in the cramped cabin, and he finished his question with spurious superficiality.

“Or do you want me to stay, sweetie?”

Morty thought of all the lunch periods he had spent sitting alone in the cafeteria, and of all the birthdays no one had shown up to, and of all the weekends spent hidden away in his room, playing video games all by himself. He stared across the garage at the fire door he knew wasn’t going to open, and everything felt so far away. For some reason, Frank Palicky’s bloodless, hostile face surfaced once again in his mind, and he remembered Rick asking him, _“D’you think he would’ve stopped if I hadn’t shown up, Morty?”_

No one was showing up to stop Rick. There was no bigger bully around the corner that could step in and scare him off, and Morty understood why that terrified him; his grandfather was a scary man, aggressive and ruthless and spiteful, bad-tempered and brutal and brilliantly cruel. 

What made no sense was the little colliery of comfort that Rick’s dominance dug out inside his chest.

He thought of Rick never again kicking his classroom door in to drag him out of school; never again waking him up in the middle of the night to take him somewhere he’d found just because he thought he might like it; never again telling him, _“I really do need you, Morty.”_

He didn’t want his grandpa to leave, and it wasn’t just to spare his mother’s feelings. 

She hated him, anyway.

“I w-want you to stay, grandpa Rick…” he said, voice liquid with loneliness, and he caught a glimpse of his grandfather’s face in the rearview mirror; dark and warm as a summer cloud threatening rain, a graven image of greed, watching and waiting just as he ever was, and he sobbed out in soft, raw fright, “... but I don’t want this.” 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Rick continued to unzip his coat, and in the tone of a parent patiently explaining to their child that they couldn’t have two desserts, he said, “You can’t have both.” 

Morty cried miserably as Rick got to the bottom stop of his zipper, and brought his other hand up to undo the insert pin. He pulled his coat open, and the whisper of air on his sweat soaked skin was enough to make him tremble violently. 

“C’mon, let’s get this coat off, you - you’re burning up in this thing, M-Morty,” Rick said, so reasonable and concerned that Morty could think of nothing to say to refute him as he slid it off his shoulders and down over his arms. He set it in the backseat on top of all the ice carving tools, and Morty was utterly, irredeemably lost. 

Rick slid a hand up his chest to halfway noose his neck, and Morty swallowed down a mouthful of gall and wormwood, asking meekly, “D-does this count as the ‘anything’ I have to do so you don’t - so you won’t tickle me again?” 

Rick chuckled, waylaid with attachment, overcome with earnestness as he tilted his grandson’s chin up and to the side to look at him, “God, if that’s all I gotta hold off on to taste you, then I can give that up, baby.”

Morty couldn’t make eye contact, gaze sliding off to stare unseeing out the driver’s window, and Rick’s other hand came up to finish the noose at the back of his neck, fingering the sweat damp curls edging his atlas vertebra. “Will you - um… will you take me out for ice cream t-tomorrow, Rick?”

Rick laughed, a narcotic sound, barbiturate eyes and blue velvet smile, breathing assuasive bloodlust against his lips, “Sure thing, sweetie. That place we heard a commercial for earlier?”

Morty nodded against Rick’s hand, and Rick leaned down close, ever so slightly grazing their mouths together, and Morty shut his eyes tight as he stammered out with jarring normality, “I need - I really need a new pair of shoes. I don’t think this pink stain is gonna come out - a-a-and I need a new phone, too, Rick. M-mine got - it’s ruined now.” 

“Shit, sweetheart,” Rick said, chuckle going deep and terribly indulgent as he slid his hands round to perfectly frame his grandson’s neck on either side, stroking his thumbs under the tender hollow of his jaw, “I’ll buy you whatever the fuck you want, if that’s what it takes.”

Rick pressed their mouths together, and just like that, Morty Smith could no longer say that he’d never been kissed.

Morty didn’t know what he expected. Perhaps for Rick to kiss like he fought, merciless and cruel, a blinding surge of violence and gnashing teeth, clamping his neck tight and shaking him like an untrained cur with a rabbit caught between its jaws, but no. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Rick was enormously, exceedingly, almost excessively gentle, cradling his neck, cupping his face, caressing the delicate skin of his chin and jaw and cheeks; he licked at his lips catlike and inquiring, before touching his tongue against his teeth, a lamer of liquor against the occlusion of his incisors. 

It did not taste good, and it smelled worse than it tasted, which was already a pretty high bar, and Morty scrunched up his face in distaste. Rick huffed another laugh against his lips, and asked, “What, does - is Canadian Mist not a _-urrp-_ a good enough mouthwash for you, Morty?”

Morty wanted to pinch his lips together, but that meant he had to breathe through his nose, so he settled for sucking air in through his teeth and saying, “Rick, your mouth smells like something that got left in the trunk of someone’s car and died three times over.”

Rick, apparently, found this hilarious, and he snickered without shame. “Y’know, y-y-you’re kinda a fussy little shit sometimes, right, Morty?”

The cage of his hands closed in around Morty’s neck, and when his grandson gasped, he sighed into his mouth, “It’s a good thing for you it just makes me wanna bend you over and give you something to really bitch about, baby.”

Morty tried to shy away with a whimper, but Rick held him in place and properly sealed their mouths together. He slid his tongue over his, sleek and salivating and sinuous, a wet, serpentine warmth Morty wanted to flinch from but couldn’t. With Rick surveying every square centimeter of his mouth, Morty realized that it was actually quite small; all his permanent teeth had yet to come in, his first bicuspid and second molar still pending eruption, and something about that thought made him feel more ill than Rick’s liquor soaked saliva. 

He was already small for his age, a late bloomer in many regards, and Rick was a long line of lithe, fully fledged muscle beneath him. His grandfather handled him like glass, but Morty could still feel the scrape of well formed callouses lightly catching on his soft skin. Rick had the hands of a mechanic, an engineer, _a grown man_ , and Morty finally understood when he called him baby.

Because that’s exactly what he was to him. 

Rick worked up and swallowed down so much spit while kissing him that the taste eventually mellowed to something manageable, and the smell faded as olfactory fatigue set in. It was still unpleasant, strange and slimy and so deeply shameful he didn’t know how he was going to function like a normal human being tomorrow, but all he could do was sit and take it. Rick had no such qualms, grumbling and sighing and laving from his gums all the way back to his palatine raphe; it made him squirm, but wriggling in his grandfather’s lap made him groan in a way that made Morty’s stomach fill with rocks and set to tumbling, so he tried his best to stay still. 

Eventually, he ran out of the strength to keep up the tension ossifying his muscles, and he had to relax. Just as he couldn’t keep up crying forever, he couldn’t hold himself endlessly taut and ready to run. His fight or flight response reached the point of failure, and he had to sag into his grandfather’s hold on him. There was simply no other alternative.

Rick hadn’t closed the garage door behind them, and the retiring light of a lamppost across the street pressed dim and demure against the back of the ship. He could hear Mr. Benson’s toy dogs barking from behind his fenced backyard; the soft zigzag _schick-schick-schick-schick_ of a nearby automatic sprinkler system switching on; all the peaceful, familiar sounds of his family’s neighborhood at night. He set his hands on Rick’s chest, and he sank bonelessly against him, and Rick made a deeply satisfied grumble and leaned back in his seat, licking at his lips and cheeks and tongue with broad strokes of his own, and this wasn’t a dream he needed to wake up from.

It was a nightmare he needed to fall asleep to escape, and he was getting very tired indeed. 

It was as if Rick were searching for something with his tongue and his hands. Morty didn’t kiss him back; he didn’t know how, and even if he did, he’d be too overwhelmed with shame to do so. Rick mapped and measured, cherished and chevyed, shirred and sheathed, silken tongue and langsom fingers and pawing, cosseting palms, and it was _exhausting_. How much he enjoyed it, how endless his appetite for it was, how long he seemed to be able to go without so much as a second’s pause. Morty almost wondered how long he’d wanted to do this to him, but quickly decided it was better not to think about that. 

After what had to have been at least a half hour, Morty’s eyes began to fall instead of pinch shut, sleep creeping in on the edges of his consciousness. It had to be past midnight, and he spared a thought for his dad, wondering if he’d been terribly worried when he hadn’t come home by the time he said Rick would have him back. If Jerry had tried to call, Morty had never heard or felt Rick’s phone buzz. He thought about how his family could ever really get in touch with him if they needed to while he was off traipsing about the wide open cosmos, especially when he was in other dimensions. He really needed to make sure the phone Rick got him tomorrow had literally stellar coverage. 

It was as he was distracted by these sleepy, meandering thoughts that Rick circled his thumbs around his ears and pressed in on the mastoid process just behind them, easing slowly down the line of his neck as he pulled back to run his tongue over the seam of his lips; Morty shivered hard, coals setting to smoldering in the pit of his stomach, and a startled little moan tumbled from his mouth. Rick chuckled, and he blinked his eyes open to look up at him in confusion. His grandfather was grinning down at him, softly lit by the streetlamp across the road, and he blushed like a wedding night beneath his heavy lidded, blueblack eyes. 

“ _There it is,_ ” he said, darkly pleased, and Morty felt just as he had this morning, laying naked beneath him as he stared down at his trembling body with open enjoyment. Morty frowned at him, but it only made Rick chuckle harder. 

“God, baby, you are just too fucking cute for your own goddamn good, y-you know that?”

Morty looked down, because he definitely knew that now. He glanced at the locked driver’s side door, and asked quietly, his lips slick and tingly and kiss swollen, “A-are you, um… are you done, grandpa Rick?”

Rick lazily followed his eyes to the door only he could open, and said in a voice like a little drink before bed, “Answer me one thing, and I’ll say yes, Morty.”

Morty looked up at him through tired eyes, and nodded warily. Rick swiped at the dried salt lines on his cheeks and asked lowly, “Does it turn you on when I call you sweetheart?”

Morty’s blush went hot as the heart of any flame, and Rick laughed out a quiet, warm laugh. 

“I know it does, baby. I-I-I just wanna hear you say it.” 

Morty looked anywhere but at his grandfather, and Rick pet soft and sweet along his jawline, watching him struggle to figure out what to say. He knew what it meant; he’d listened in sex ed, and he’d heard plenty of suggestive talk from classmates, and he had access to the internet. He wasn’t that naive, but he didn’t really know if the way Rick made him feel qualified as being ‘turned on.’

He thought that being aroused was supposed to be a good thing, but he really wasn’t so sure anymore.

“If you al-already know,” he swallowed, withdrawing his hands from Rick's chest to knock his knuckles together, “then what does it matter if I say it, Rick?”

Rick didn’t miss a beat, answering with indecent ease, “Because I wanna think about you telling me it does in that whiny little voice of yours while I jack off tonight, _sweetheart_.” 

Morty choked, and Rick laughed at the scandalized look on his face. 

“Y’know that’s what I was doing last night, right, Morty? In - in the bathroom?” he asked, deeply amused at the shock playing over his grandson’s face. “You kept saying m-m-my name in your sleep, and it got me so fucking hard it was either rub one out real quick or pin you facedown and slide my cock up your tight little ass, baby.”

Morty couldn’t have looked more stricken if Rick had backhanded him, his eyes going wide as the blood drained from his face, his breath taking on a high, cornered edge. The crushing terror of claustrophobia cloaked every inch of his skin, and he needed to get _away_. He tried to scramble off his grandfather’s lap, to throw himself back, to the side, any direction that got him out of Rick’s reach, but Rick just snatched up his shoulders and shook him one good time, snapping out, “Fuck, Morty, look out for the ice-nine, you fucking moron!”

Morty glanced over at the swirling cubes beside them, to his trapper hat on the floorboard which was still somehow frozen stiff hours on despite the warmth in the cabin, down to Rick’s long, weathered fingers digging into his upper arms, holding him completely still, and tears once again distorted his vision. He covered his face with his hands, and he wept weakly, and Rick sighed out in sharp annoyance above him. 

“Ah, _fuck_.”

Rick gathered him back against his chest, tucking his face into the crook of his neck and stroking up and down his back, his irritation banked by softness as he said, “I didn’t do it, d-did I, sweetie? I told you nothing was gonna happen, it’s - it’s okay, don’t worry, shh, shh now. I’m still gonna wait for a bit, Morty, c-calm down.”

Morty curled up in his lap, crying softly into his hands against Rick’s neck, trapped as a treed raccoon with a redbone baying away below.

“H-h-how long?” he whispered. 

“Until you turn thirteen, Morty.”

Morty felt sick. Rick had given this serious thought, and he knew down to the day when it was going to happen, and this was so far beyond scary, now. 

“That’s rape, Rick,” he said, damp and docile. “That’s rape, and th-this is child molestation.” 

Rick nodded against the top of his head, petting at the nape of his neck. “I know, baby.”

Morty’s fright gave itself over to a terrible, trembling awe. He could only cry for so long, and he could only hold himself tense for so long, and he could only stay so scared for so long. Numbness bled into his voice as he asked, “Why w-would you - god, Rick, why would you wanna do something like that to me?” 

Rick slid an arm under his knees, holding him just as he had when he comforted him after telling him what Frank Palicky wanted to do to him, and breathed in against his hair as he said, “Because I’m really fucking selfish, and I want you all to myself, Morty.”

It was the same answer as before, just crueler with clarity. Morty let himself be cradled, his hands sliding down from his face to lie limply back on Rick’s chest as he said again, more insistent than during the ride home, “... but I _don’t want you to_ , grandpa Rick.”

Rick fingered the curls crimping around his ears, completely undeterred by his grandson’s lack of consent, and he said with quiet, uncompromising conviction, “You will. J-just give it - just give me a little time, and I’ll make you want it, sweetie.” 

Morty quivered in his arms, and Rick continued calming and caressing him, whispering the most terrifying thing Morty had heard in all of his not quite five thousand days.

“One day, you’ll ask me for it. I promise you that, baby.”

He sounded so _sure_ , so composed and confident that it was hard to see how he could be wrong. Morty closed his eyes, and saw it in his mind’s eye; Rick holding him down in that cold hotel room, undoing the clamp closure of his belt buckle and pressing his cock inside of him, that same look on his face Morty had seen in the mirror last night, surmounted with base satisfaction and dripping with sin and so sordidly _dirty_ , and Morty couldn’t imagine ever wanting that, let alone _asking_ for it. 

“I won’t, Rick,” he said, almost silent in the still, deep shadows of their garage. “I won’t ever ask you for that, and I-I won’t - I will _never_ want it.”

Rick just laughed, undiscouraged and arrantly fond, and said, “Wanna bet, baby?”

Morty blanched, his stomach churning viciously, and he covered his mouth with a clammy hand. He squirmed in his grandfather’s hold and reached again for the door handle, struggling to reach it from his awkward position as he stammered out frantically, “R-Rick, seriously, let - _let me go_ , I’m gonna - I’m gonna -” 

Rick pressed a button on the center console and the driver’s door opened automatically, and he set Morty down on the ground. He watched Morty run across the room and fumble with the handle of the fire door for a few frantic seconds before finally getting it open and stumbling inside, so wrapped up in the need to get to a toilet he forgot to shut it behind him. He stared after his grandson for a long while, the homey yellow light from above the oven in the kitchen jilting over the cold concrete foundation of the garage. 

The rest of the night passed in the tranquil hush of an otherwise perfect spring evening.

…

Full Tilt Ice Cream was, not to put too fine a point on the matter, pretty fucking awesome.

They had a fine assortment of pinball and retro arcade games, Pac-Man and Space Invaders and Gauntlet, Centipede and Dig Dug and Donkey Kong, as well as shuffleboard tables and Skee-Ball alley rollers. Local art was displayed proudly on the walls, bubblegum pop rock poured down from the speaker system and they served the finest beer the Northwest had to offer on tap for the adults. Of course, that was all before even mentioning the ice cream, a homespun heaven of sugar, crafted with care and creativity, a taste of quintessential Americana in every bite. 

Morty sat at the bar in a high stool, kicking his new low-top cross trainers as he ate Mexican chocolate ice cream out of a cup with a spoon. Normally, he’d get it in a waffle cone and lick at it, but Rick was sitting next to him drinking a shaker pint of Trickster IPA, and he felt uncomfortable at the thought of his grandfather looking at him as he lapped up steadily melting cream. 

Rick was watching Summer across the parlor, where she was posted next to a Twilight Zone pinball machine making moon eyes at a young man in a lime green track jacket who fancied himself a Baba O’Riley wizard. He snorted over his blonde beer. 

“Jeez, she’s got even worse taste in men than your mom, and that’s - fuck, that's saying something.” 

Morty focused on the glittery bar beside his cup of ice cream, reading the tracklist on the LP vinyl record laying under its laminated surface. It was Buddy Holly’s _Reminiscing_ , and he thought he might know two songs from it. 

“She’s just a little boy crazy, Rick. E-Evan’s really not that bad, and she’s been pretty serious about him for like a year.” 

Evan was okay. He at least didn’t call him any names when Summer had him over, but Morty was sure that was just because he was too preoccupied with sweeping his long bangs to the side for optimal boyish charm. Self-obsessed people were always too busy thinking about themselves to be actively mean to anyone; it was only ever disinterested unkindness from boys like Evan. 

Rick looked down at the record he was reading, and said, “That boy’ll ditch her for a dumb bitch with a good rack as soon as he gets the chance. At least Jerry’s devoted to Beth.” 

Morty tilted his head up at his grandfather, sliding his clean spoon out of his mouth. “Did y-you just say something nice about my dad, Rick?”

“Blind devotion isn’t necessarily a good thing, Morty,” he said, taking a sip of his beer and watching Morty scoop up another spoonful of ice cream, “but in this case, yeah, sure. I’ll give your dad that. He didn’t bail for a bigger pair of tits.” 

Morty wondered about the casual disdain Rick seemed to have for women. He spoke about them like they were all aggravating, burdensome creatures that he was forced to deal with on a daily basis. Morty glanced over his shoulder at his sister, who was holding her hands across her stomach and pressing her upper arms in tight against her sides to make her chest pop coquettishly, and he returned his attention to his ice cream, setting his elbows on the sparkly counter and resting his cheek in his hand. 

“Y’know you’re kinda sexist, right?” he asked, bringing his full spoon to his lips. He was all too aware of Rick’s eyes tracking every slight movement of his mouth, and he ate with carefully masked enjoyment. It was difficult, because this ice cream was absolutely delightful, but he managed to keep his face blank as he savored it. Rick leaned his outside elbow on the counter, too, turning his body towards Morty and away from Summer. 

“Is it really - but is it really sexism if I _-eeugh-_ if I hate men just as much, M-Morty?”

Morty thought about this as he pretended not to love the taste of Mexican chocolate, and decided, “Yeah, pretty sure it is. Just because you hate everyone doesn’t change anything.”

Rick watched him as the sugar slid down his throat, and privately, so the nearby patrons couldn’t hear, he said, “I didn’t say I hated everyone, sweetie.”

Morty hunched his shoulders, the back of his neck prickling under Rick’s stare. He ignored his low chuckle, and changed the subject by asking, “Buddy Holly died really young, didn’t he?”

Rick nodded, looking down at his record decorating the bar. “Yeah, in a plane crash. I was about - s-somewhere around your age when it happened, Morty,” he shook his head, taking another swallow of his beer before he said distantly, as if he were remembering how it had felt all those years ago, “Sad fucking day.”

Morty frowned, finding it incredibly difficult to imagine his grandfather at his age. “That w-w-would’ve been in like the fifties, right?” 

Rick glossed over this, saying, “There’s a dimension where he didn’t get on the plane. Ritchie Valens lost the coin toss, The Big Bopper didn’t have the flu, and Buddy Holly factored in travel time when he was scheduling his tour dates, so n-none of them got on the plane, and they - they’re all still alive.”

Morty considered this, and said, “That’s - god, that’s really sad, Rick.”

Rick shrugged. “It’s sad in that dimension, too. Waylon Jennings died over there instead and they never got _Nashville Rebel_. I mean, I’d - personally, I’d trade Jennings for Holly anyday, b-but still.”

Morty ate his ice cream, and Rick drank his beer, and an upbeat bubbly piece of pop rock that tempted tapping feet and drum rolling fingers played in the background as the agreeable chatter of people enjoying a Sunday afternoon of arcade games carried on around them.

_“- children, behave; that’s what they say when we’re together, and watch how you play; they don’t understand, and so we’re running just as fast as we can -”_

What was so bizarre was how normal today had been. Besides catching Rick staring at him like a half-starved hunting dog with a bit more frequency than before, nothing about today had been terribly different. He woke up late, and he had a breakfast of cold bacon and eggs his mom had fixed a couple hours earlier, and Rick asked him and Summer if they’d like to go out shopping for the afternoon. Rick bought him shoes and a phone at the Marketplace in Lower Queen Anne, and they’d ambled about, wasting time browsing the shops in a banal family outing.

Morty had nearly finished his ice cream, and as he was scraping the last of the liquid chocolate from his cup, Rick asked him, “D’you want any more, Morty?”

_“- I think we’re alone now, there doesn’t seem to be anyone around; I think we’re alone now, the beating of our hearts in the only sound -”_

Morty did, but he didn’t want to eat in front of his grandfather anymore, so he shook his head no, and asked instead, “Could I, um - can I have some money for quarters, Rick?”

Rick took out his wallet to hand him a twenty dollar bill, telling him, “One of these days I’m gonna take you to Blips and Chitz. That place blows all these boring games outta the fucking water, Morty.” 

Morty rolled his eyes, shoving the money in his front pocket and hopping down off the stool. “Rick, just because Galaga was invented on Earth doesn’t make it a-any less of a perfect game. Not everything has to be, y’know -” he cast a hand up to the sky in mild exasperation, “- _out of this world_ or w-w-whatever to be any good.”

Rick looked him up and down, that awful, hungry look in his eyes again, and Morty grabbed at his elbow and lowered his eyes to all the sponge based marble mats laid in front of the arcade games. Rick chuckled at his nervous body language, and downed the last of his beer, letting it pour down his throat before tapping his glass down on top of Buddy Holly’s third posthumously released album. He licked the pad of his thumb and reached out to smudge away a stain of chocolate cream from the corner of his grandson’s mouth, conceding warmly, “Alright, so maybe you’re not _entirely_ wrong there, baby.”

_“- look at the way we gotta hide what we’re doin’, ‘cause what would they say if they ever knew? And so we’re running just as fast as we can, holdin’ onto one another’s hand -”_

Morty held very still, squeezing his eyes shut, and there it was again; the finishing nails in his heart, the queasy pit in his stomach, the trembling weakness in his knees. 

The purposeful reminder that last night had happened, no matter how normal everything seemed in the light of day. 

Rick withdrew his hand and laughed down at him, and Morty took a step back, red faced and shivering in anxiety. He canvassed his eyes wildly about the room to find out if anyone had seen, if anyone _knew_ \- but no. 

No one was looking, and no one cared. 

Why would they? There really wasn’t anything that odd about what Rick had done. Grandparents cleaned their grandkids’ faces like that all the time, and if the child squirmed and shied away, it was just because they didn’t want to be treated like a baby in public anymore. Strangers saw that sort of thing and laughed softly, awwing at the blushing awkwardness of a child embarrassed by a grandparent’s affection. 

Rick watched him as his face flickered through a half dozen emotions, and smirked as if he knew exactly what was running through his head. 

“Run along and play now, sweetie,” he said, quietly amused, and Morty turned on his heel and ran.

After trading in the twenty for a cupful of quarters at the change machine, Morty stood playing Galaga in the back of the parlor, thinking about the dimension where Buddy Holly lived past the age of twenty-two. Rick must have visited there; he spoke about it like he’d seen it firsthand, and it sounded like the young man’s death hadn’t completely disaffected him as a teenager. He wondered what that must be like; to live with the sad fact of such a tragic death for decades, and then to invent interdimensional travel and hop over to a world where that tragedy was avoided just as easily as it happened. 

It seemed very depressing. 

He let a Boss Galaga beam up one of his starships, and wondered how many different dimensions his grandfather had been to. With his intense wanderlust, it had to be in the many thousands, if not tens of thousands. He’d taken Morty to no less than a dozen different dimensions in one day looking for the perfect mantecados when Morty had told him he’d never had any traditional Spanish desserts, and would have kept going if Morty hadn’t put his foot down and said he needed to go to bed before it was time to wake up. 

He thought about the Morty Rick took that homework from all those weeks ago. Did Rick do things to that version of him? He lost his focus, and missed his chance to destroy the Boss Galaga and double up on his starships. He’d have to get it the next go around.

If there was a dimension where Frank Palicky starred in an _Avengers_ movie, then there must also be a dimension where there was a Morty that didn’t mind his grandfather doing things to him. Infinite universes meant infinite possibilities. If Rick wanted him like he said he did, he wondered why he didn’t just go to one of those alternate realities. Wouldn’t a willing Morty be easier to deal with than him?

He didn’t understand why all these thoughts made him feel so hollow inside. 

Just as he was gunning down a looping string of Zako Bees, a hand tapped his back, and he yelped and flinched down as someone said right behind him, “Hey, Morty.” 

He swirled around, just to sag in relief when he only saw his sister’s confused, annoyed face. 

“Jesus, Morty, I can score you a chill pill if you need, just say the word and I’ll hook you up with some bars,” she shook her head, brushing off his jumpiness and pointing to the cup of quarters he had set on the arcade controller deck. “I just wanted some quarters for pinball, man.”

“Oh, yeah, s-sure,” he said, handing her the cup, which she took and fished a handful of coins out of, her face taking on a hard edge that Morty blinked at.

“What is this, like fifty dollars worth?” she asked, slightly bitter, and Morty tilted his head in puzzlement.

“N-no, it’s only twenty,” he said, thrown by her peevish glare and pinched mouth. 

“Oh, _only_ twenty,” she scoffed, looking down at his new shoes and his pants, where his new phone was resting in his back pocket. “And those shoes are _only_ two hundred, and that phone is _only_ a grand. God, he spoils you; you know that, right?”

Even though Morty knew his sister was a little jealous of the attention Rick gave him, the intensity of it in her voice was utterly jarring, and he asked, “D-didn’t h-he buy you all those clothes when we - that time we went to the mall, Summer?” 

Summer frowned, thoroughly insulted. “No, I bought all that myself, with money I earned babysitting and cleaning houses. Grandpa Rick doesn’t buy me shit like he does for you.”

“He doesn’t -” Morty started, but he remembered Rick telling him he’d buy him anything he wanted last night, and his voice went irresolute as he finished quietly, “... buy m-me that m-much stuff.” 

Summer handed him the cup of coins back, unimpressed. “Are you telling me you don’t know who got you that PlayStation and all those games for Christmas, Morty?” 

Morty held the cup in both hands, eyebrows drawing together in uncertainty. “M-mom and dad, right?”

Summer rolled her eyes. “Dad’s been out of work for like, a year and a half, and mom makes just enough to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on. _Grandpa Rick_ got you over a thousand dollars worth of Christmas gifts, Morty. He's _always_ sent you gifts for Christmas - and for your birthday, too. You really didn’t know that?”

Morty flushed and looked down, raising one hand to rub at the back of his neck as he admitted softly, “N-no, Summer. I, um - I really didn’t.”

“Oh,” she said, mildly mean but mostly just struggling to work her handful of quarters in her too tight capri pockets as she turned away, throwing distractedly over her shoulder, “and here I’ve been thinking you knew you were his favorite before he even showed back up.”

Morty felt a fissure of anger crackle through him. He considered for one second saying, _‘Oh, yeah, being his favorite is the best! He made out with me and told me he wanted to fuck me last night; totally worth it for a PS4, though. Ten out of ten, would get molested again,’_ but then he thought of Rick telling him that he was going to keep his mouth shut about this, and he thought of his sister’s face twisting up in shock and disgust if those words ever came out of his mouth, and he just stared at the sticky black floor.

“Summer - hey, Summer, wait.”

She glanced back at him, and he handed her the cup, unable to make eye contact. “Here, just - y-you can have the rest.”

“What, seriously?” she took it from him, letting the coins in her hand chink back in against the rest in the cup, glad to give up her hopeless bid to fit them in her pockets. She gestured to his game of Galaga behind him, and asked, “You’re done already?” 

Morty looked back at the screen, where his ship had been seized and the enemies all floated in standby formation. He read the centered text, and his shoulders slumped in on themselves.

_Game Over_

_Fighter Captured_

“Yeah,” he said quietly, walking back to the bar. “I don’t wanna - I don’t feel like playing anymore. Have fun, Summer.” 

He climbed back onto the barstool next to Rick, having to brace his foot on the ring of steel at its base and hold onto the lip of the counter to make it up. Rick was halfway through another beer, and he looked at him through laidback, hooded eyes. 

“Back so soon?”

Morty crossed his forearms on the table and pillowed his cheek on them, asking sullen and tired, “Did you buy me all those Christmas gifts, Rick?”

Rick’s lips curled back, and he huffed a laugh that disturbed the foam in his glass. “Oh, s-so Summer told you.”

Morty sighed, the mild humiliation of being caught out of the loop heating his skin. “Why w-w-would you do that?”

Rick tucked an errant curl behind his ear, and smiled at him as he shivered, but otherwise kept still. “You wouldn’t have gotten anything good otherwise, sweetie.”

Morty tried to think of the other gifts he’d received for Christmas, but found that nothing stood out in his memory like Rick’s gifts. He rested his chin on his stacked wrists, and read the ice cream flavors drawn elaborately in chalk on the blackboard across from them. Some of them sounded so fanciful, with names like _Sub Pop_ and _Blue Moon Rising_ and _The End_ , and Morty had no clue huckleberry was even a real food.

“Hey, Rick.”

“Yeah, Morty?”

“I, um,” he swallowed and licked his lips, unsure why he was so nervous asking for this, but he managed to get out, “I-I’d l-like some m-more, uhm - ice cream, Rick.” 

Morty couldn’t look at the way he flashed his teeth at him, so he didn’t. 

“Which flavor?”

“I’d like to - I th-think I’d like to try cherry,” Morty turned his head to rest on his other cheek, looking in the opposite direction of his grandfather as he said, “in - in a cone, please.” 

It didn’t matter if Morty avoided his grandfather’s eyes; he radiated pleasure, his voice laurel wreathed in lazy victory as he said, “You got it, baby.” 

Rick ordered his ice cream and another beer for himself, and before Morty knew it, he was holding a paper wrapped waffle cone piled high with homemade cherry ice cream, studded generously with chunks of bright red fruit. Another song spilled down from the speakers, a golden age doowop diddy with deep vocals and bouncy percussion. 

_“- life could be a dream, if I could take you to paradise up above, if you would tell me that I’m the only one that you love, life could be a dream, sweetheart -”_

Morty tried to hide from him as he flicked out his tongue to lick at the cream, to turn his head away and draw his shoulders up high about his ears, but Rick was so tall he could look down on him with ease. He held the cone with both hands close to his mouth, taking careful little laps where the ice cream met the thin tuile-like cookie, and he knew he was being watched. 

He could feel it so clearly, at the back of his neck, across his hairline, over the side of his face. Rick rested his chin in his hand and sipped at his pale beer and stared down at him as he held himself low over the counter and laved his tongue over the pink cream, and Morty felt that strange warmth in the pit of his stomach again. It made his knees press together, and his feet flex where they dangled in midair, and it wasn't the worst thing in the world. It wasn't really that bad, actually. 

_“- life could be a dream, if only all my precious plans would come true, if you would let me spend my whole life lovin’ you, life could be a dream, sweetheart -”_

Rick reached a hand down by his mouth and plucked a sizable cherry fragment right from under his tongue, and Morty looked back up at him, startled. Rick popped the cherry in his mouth, and grinned down at his grandson’s upset pout.

“If you want some, g-get your own, Rick, jeez,” he said, sour and a little grossed out, not wanting to think about how long it had to have been since Rick last washed his hands. He swiveled his seat completely away from his grandfather, turning his back on him in a huff, but Rick just grabbed the edge of his seat and jerked him back to face him again. 

Morty shrunk beneath him as he picked another cherry piece from his ice cream, eyes unmistakably suggestive as he said before slipping it between his teeth, “I just want yours, though, sweetie.”

 _“- every time I look at you, something is on my mind; if you do what I want you to, baby, we’d be so fine, oh, life could be a dream, sh-boom, sh-boom -”_

Morty breathed hard, casting his eyes about the room again, looking at all of the nearby customers to see if anyone was eyeing them in confusion or glaring in repulsion, but it was the same as before. No one paid them any mind, everyone enjoying their own ice cream and laughing and playing games. Summer was still chatting with Baba O’Riley, and the staff were all still smiling and taking orders, and no one saw the way Rick was looking at him. 

No one ever did. 

Rick didn’t let him turn back around or cower back against the counter. He held his stool in place with a well placed knee and blocked off his section of the bar with an arm, and Morty had to eat his ice cream or let it melt all over his hands. Either way, Rick didn’t seem to mind. He drank his beer, and he watched over his grandson, and he waited. 

When Morty began to lick up the cream melting down over his waffle cone, and he caught a glimpse of his grandfather’s pupils dilating into black pits that reminded him of the vast emptiness of interstellar space, he thought of Summer snapping at him, and he felt a little resentful. 

So what if Rick bought him expensive things? It’s not like they came free, like she seemed to think they did. 

He was going to have to pay for them all one way or another. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gift art from @PickleHick! Thank you so, so much, I'm so grateful for your gorgeous artwork!
> 
> The songs mentioned in this chapter are _Truly Madly Deeply_ by Savage Garden, _I Think We're Alone Now_ by Tommy James and the Shondells, and _Sh-Boom (Life Could Be a Dream)_ by The Chords. 
> 
> I think it's safe to say no one laughed harder at Rick autoparking the ship in the Vat of Acid Episode than me; I kept the parking scene in, because this is years before he invents that, but still. I know exactly how difficult it would be to autopark, and that joke had me rolling lol
> 
> Okay, so, this chapter was supposed to cover three months and I got in about... two days, so this might turn out longer than I expected. Also, I know there's a few lines in W&W that contradict this, but I didn't know what I was talking about when I wrote that. I got into this chapter and Rick just letting Morty push him away was not happening, no way. 
> 
> This is really the tipping point, here. It takes some time to lay out all the subtle reasons Morty goes along with Rick, but I hope I adequately covered most of them in this chapter. Buckle up, ya'll, because it just keeps on going downhill from here ;)
> 
> Please let me know what you thought if you've got the time! Any favorite parts? Any guesses as to what's gonna happen next? Did I ruin any songs for you? Comments are very appreciated, and just make my day and make me wanna write that much more :) Kudos are lovely, too!
> 
> Signing off,
> 
> firstbornking


	4. June

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: graphic description of suicide.

“Oh, a-are you sure this is tight enough? I can still breathe a little, y’know.”

The Yuuwarian blinked down at him, horsefly-like insects buzzing around its filthy, slack mouth, and Morty sighed. He struggled against the unforgiving ropes binding his arms to his chest, muttering to himself with an irritation that knew no fear, “Jesus Christ, and I thought _I_ was stupid.”

To say the adventure had not gone to plan was an understatement. The rainforests of South Vitutia were home to a unique species of lungfish, which produced some highly-sought after substance essential for the production of a transdermal analgesic Rick needed for ‘his science.’

Morty didn't bother asking him to be more specific this time, accepting the ridiculously vague explanation without much fuss. He knew Rick was just chasing some elusive high, and he didn't care to know anything about his grandfather's illicit drug use. Dealing with his alcoholism was trial and tribulation enough.

“J-just so long as you don't ask me to try it, Rick,” he had said, wary and weary, as Rick dragged him from the kitchen table before he even finished his morning bowl of Lucky Charms. Rick grinned down at him, teeth glinting glossy yellow, eyes high spirited in a way that made Morty want to look anywhere but his face.

“As hysterical as tripsitting your neurotic little ass would be, Morty, sending you eight straight miles outta Memphis isn't on the agenda today, sweetie.”

No sooner had they landed in a small slade surrounded by broadleaf plantains and dense, gnarled lianas than Morty regretted everything that could have possibly led him to such a suffocating slice of hell. He groaned as he stepped down from the ship into the waterlogged undergrowth, the weight of the air forcing a shallow cough from his lungs. 

If it were just hot, Morty wouldn't have minded so much, but it was hot and _damp_ ; a sticky, sweltering, swamplike damp that reminded Morty of the atmosphere in _The_ _Creature_ _from_ _the_ _Black_ _Lagoon_. Sweat started pouring down his forehead and back within seconds of walking, his body immediately pulling out all the stops to cool him down. The swarms of bloodsucking, acid spitting bottlebees were just icing on the hog wallow cake, and Morty refused to keep his discontent to himself.

“Rick,” he said, voice flat with vexation, waving the insects away from his face, “I know I’m - that I’m no expert on drugs, but I-I-I can say with absolute _certainty_ that no high could possibly be worth coming to this godforsaken hellhole.”

Rick, who had transformed his arm into an undulating plasma blade to slice a path through the thick vegetation, tossed a bemused look over his shoulder. 

“Not even if it’s one that could make Jessica realize you exist, Morty?”

Morty fell farther behind his grandfather, humid humiliation fogging up the walls of his heart. He stared at his feet as he muttered, “Don’t talk to me about Jessica, y-you fucking jerk.” 

“I’m sorry, what was that, sweetheart?” Rick called back to him, making quick work of the vining philodendrons blocking the way to an alluvial riverbank. Morty dragged his feet, clenched his fists, and slowly smothered the fury spurring him to repeat himself at the top of his lungs.

He breathed out slowly, and attempted to sound agreeable when he said, “Nothing, grandpa Rick!”

Rick shot him a knowing look, brow quirked in amusement, and Morty made a point to keep as much distance between them as possible. 

Of course, that meant when he triggered the snare trap hidden under a thicket of folding ginger leaves, Rick was too far ahead to hear him shout for help. 

“Rick! R-Rick! Come - _grandpa_ _Rick_ , please - _please come back!_ ”

Crackling and panicked, he screamed for his grandfather as he hung upside down from a titanic ragout laurel, its mossy bark seeping the noxious odor of rotting meat. Ringing sick and loud through the pain singing about the blood rushing to his head, a sharp _pop_ echoed inside his body, a sound like an overfilled balloon exploding in a small room.

He fainted within a minute.

When he came to, it was in the midst of a primitive commune, a small riverside settlement with a slapdash row of wickiups, cooking pits and tanning racks. Stout, sickly green creatures ambled about, faces flat and round as flapjacks, delta wing shaped webbed hands gripping crude spears or flimsy fishing poles. Morty only had to observe them for a few moments to conclude they were all about as bright as the inside of a burlap sack, and he looked up at the toadman he assumed had been assigned to watch over him. 

“So, uh,” he began, unsure how to proceed given he had never been kidnapped before. The creature slowly met his eyes, horizontal slit pupils betraying nothing of a deep inner life or keen sense of self awareness, and Morty swallowed hard. “H-how about them Redskins?”

The creature raised its spear, silently poked his distended ankle, and deliberately returned the weapon to its side when Morty screeched in agony. 

“ _Jesus fucking Christ!_ ” he shouted, so loud the rest of the toad people glanced in his direction, all dim and dumbstruck, and he breathed heavily through the gut wrenching shock to his system. “Not a football fan, or - or d’you just find the name th-that insensitive?”

It raised its spear again, and Morty recoiled onto his side, drawing his knees up to his bound chest and screaming out frantically for his grandfather to come save him. 

He hated him more than ever, but he’d give anything to see him right about now. 

He found the creature left him alone so long as he didn’t make eye contact with it. He could quip and snipe with impunity so long as he kept his gaze elsewhere, and that’s what he did to pass the time and keep his mind off the pain and panic threatening to swallow him whole. He complained about his bonds, and he groused about the foul smell drifting from the urine soaked leather and piles of fish carcasses, and he cursed their entire backwater way of life and whatever false gods they believed in.

When Rick finally showed up, he’d worked himself into such a state he didn’t even feel a shred of relief at the sight of him. 

Only more anger. 

Rick looked like he’d been trawling through a swamp for the last hour. A thick, black mud coated him from his toes to his waist, his hands to the middle of his upper arms. Rotting spatterdock leaves lay plastered across his thighs, and golden algae clung to his hair. His right arm was curled around a bizarre creature Morty could only guess was the lungfish they’d come here for; it was a sledgehammer of a fish, with a massive, flat head and a thick, tubular body. It wriggled in an extremely unsettling manner, and Morty paled when it flashed a line of thin, perfectly symmetrical teeth as it struggled.

Rick's eyes landed on him. He took in his grotesquely swollen ankle, and whistled lowly. “Jeez, Morty. Talk a-about a bad break.”

Morty's mouth dropped open before he snapped it back shut to bare his teeth at his grandfather, hissing out, “Really, Rick?”

Rick shrugged, eminently amused. He hoisted the lungfish higher up on his hip, and said, “I hate to break this to you, baby, but I'm not above a good pun.”

“I hate to break this to you, Rick, but you're nowhere near as funny as you think you are,” Morty said, dour and deadpan. His irritation only served to make Rick chuckle as he stepped into the settlement. 

“Ooh, you don't handle pain well at all, d'you, sweetheart?” Rick tilted his head, sizing up the toadman guarding his grandson. It gaped at him, and he fished something out of his pocket with none of the urgency Morty felt the situation required. “This is what you get for dragging your feet, Morty. W-what did I tell you about staying by my side? If you'd've just toed the line for the one rule I gave you, you wouldn't be sitting there with a total talar dislocation, Morty.”

Morty glared at him, biting his cheek to avoid screaming at the top of his lungs. He breathed out through his nose, digging his fingers into the dirt beside himself as he forced himself to say through clenched teeth, “I didn't even want to come here, Rick.”

Rick pulled out a small, metal oval, with five spheres spaced along its edge. He pressed a button in the center of it, and the spheres sparked to life, arcing out like light blue, periplasm fingers. Rick tossed the device, and the fingers landed on the ground; Morty stared at it scuttle about like a spider crab, transfixed by its freakish form of locomotion as it sought out a target.

“Forty-two degrees, one minute, thirty-six seconds north, eighty-nine degrees, eleven minutes, twenty-eight seconds west,” Rick said, half paying attention, looking down the river at the other toad people cleaning fish and grinding leaves into a yellow paste in a large, shallow rock bowl. As soon as the coordinates left his mouth, the device’s legs turned red, and it lunged for the creature guarding Morty. 

Morty shrieked as it wrapped itself around the toadman’s neck and torso, locking its corposant legs around his captor; they sizzled and sliced through its flesh, and it let loose an awful wail as the plasma neatly divided it into nine pieces. Its head rolled to rest against Morty’s thigh, and Morty gave a full body flinch and shudder as he squirmed to get away from it. 

Rick paid the scene no mind, walking down the riverbank to the other inhabitants of the settlement. Morty looked from the smoke rising from the fresh corpse beside him, to the once again blue plasma device standing still in front of him, to his grandfather’s back behind him. 

“Wh-what are you - where are you _going_ , Rick?” Morty called out to him, voice frantic and pained and utterly fed up. Rick tossed an unconcerned hand over his shoulder, making his way to the rock bowl in the center of the settlement. 

“I’ll get you in a second, sweetie, just sit tight,” he said, shifting the lungfish to lay over both his forearms as he approached the other toad people around the bowl, none of whom seemed to have even noticed the sudden demise of their fellow villager. “Not that you can really do anything else, but - y’know what I mean.”

Morty stared after him, expression one of utter indignation. He sputtered, struggling to form a coherent protest through sheer fatigue and fury. “Goddamnit, Rick! T-take me home _right now!_ ”

Rick didn’t listen to him, coming to stand at the edge of the large in-ground mortar, between two Yuuwarians dressed in palm frond skirts and necklaces fashioned of lungfish teeth. The creatures didn’t look at him, continuing to pound the leaves into a wet paste with long, blunt sticks, and he let the lungfish flop into the middle of the bowl. Morty watched it flip and flail about, mouth opening to gasp for air in a way that made him a little sick to his stomach, before it started eating the crushed yellow leaves around it. The toad people stopped working the paste, dropped their sticks and fell to their knees immediately. 

“What… the hell,” Morty said to himself, confused but too tired to really care about anything but the pain in his foot at this point. As the lungfish ate, it started to secrete a mucus from the pulp cavities between its cosmoid scales, which glistened with a brilliant, pearlescent sheen. Rick fished a culture tube from his lab coat’s breast pocket, squatted down and scooped up the mucus while the Yuuwarians all croaked and bowed around him. 

After it was filled, he capped it and called out another set of coordinates, and the crab-legged plasma device bounded over to the mortar and latched on to one of the bowing toad people. Rick walked back over to Morty as the creatures were all severed into piles of limbs, heads and quartered torsos behind him.

“Okay, now that that’s outta the way,” he said conversationally, coming to a stop before his grandson and looking down on him with a playful glint in his eye, “You up for lunch, baby?”

Morty kept his foot as stable as possible as he scowled up at his grandfather, snapping out, “H-has anyone ever told you you’re insufferable, Rick? Because you really are, and I just - I can’t -”

“Morty, if you’re about to say you can’t stand me, I’m gonna fucking lose it,” Rick cut him off, so thoroughly entertained Morty had to fight the urge to cuss him out. He focused on his breathing, nauseous and dizzy and unable to stay angry for long.

He glared at his grandfather’s feet as he said, “I’m in a lot of pain, Rick.” 

Rick’s demeanor softened. His cruel grin faded into a sympathetic sigh as he flicked his hand and transformed his index finger into a small blade. He ducked down to cut through his grandson’s bonds, and Morty heaved out a sharp, relieved breath, shrugging off the ropes and rubbing the blood back into his arms.

“Th-thank you, grandpa- _ah!_ Ow, R-Rick, god - ow, ow, _ow!_ ” Morty yelped, squealing in agony, his momentary gratitude dying a swift death as Rick scooped him up in a bridal carry, hoisting him up against his chest and badly jostling his injured leg. 

“I know, I know it hurts, sweetie,” Rick said soothingly, setting off towards a jungle path cleared by the Yuuwarians. “The ship’s not far. I'll take care of your leg when we get there, Morty, just - just hold on to me, c'mon.”

Morty did as he was told, clinging about his grandfather's neck, in far too much pain to feel a shred of embarrassment at the picture he presented. He was concerned only with minimizing how much his leg jarred and jolted as Rick carried him over the uneven terrain. 

It would later occur to him that Rick could have opened a portal and skipped this entire ordeal, but as it happened, he could think of nothing but the blood pounding sick and heavy in his head, the nausea swirling slick and steady in his stomach, and clutching his grandfather as tight as he could to take his mind off the pain.

Upon arriving at the ship, Rick clicked the keyfob to open the doors, and deposited Morty in the passenger seat. Morty grimaced as his foot bent unnaturally against the floorboard, and he focused on Rick’s voice as he went on cool and calm and claustral, “Just gimme a minute, sweetheart, and I’ll - I’ll fix it, okay? J-just a minute, and grandpa’ll make it all better, baby.”

Morty’s foot throbbed mercilessly, a wild, intolerable ache the likes of which he’d never felt before. He gave a small nod with a sharp whine, and whimpered out, “Okay, gr-grandpa.”

He didn’t miss how Rick’s eyes flashed in the richly dappled shade, but he was ill with relentless pain, and he was half-dead on his feet, and he was sure suggesting they just go to an emergency room back in Seattle wouldn’t fly over well.

He had no choice but to put his trust in a man who had promised to take everything from him.

Rick took out the mucus filled culture tube and unstopped it, sliding some out onto his palm and kneeling to slather it over Morty’s inflamed ankle. Before Morty could worry too much about the danger of such a strange substance coming into contact with his skin, immediate relief from his pain washed over him, and he relaxed against the backrest. He eyed his grandfather warily, a frown slicing across his face. 

“You couldn’t have put this on before you carried me all the way here, Rick?” he said, still irritated but much less injured. 

Rick shrugged, reaching over him to feel around for something in the backseat. “Y-you did wander off from me, Morty. There need to be consequences when you break rules, otherwise you’ll never learn.”

He produced a small black case, and he unlatched it on the edge of the seat. Inside was a large glass syringe and a variety of rubber stopped dram vials, the very sight of which was enough to make Morty flinch and quickly look away. He saw Rick smile out of the corner of his eye, and he balled his hands into little fists by his thighs.

“Scared of needles, sweetie?”

Morty said nothing, mouth going dry as chalk and skin going just as pale, and Rick let out a husky laugh as he plucked up the needle and a vial full of some unctuous, purple liquid. “Just focus on my voice, Morty, and it'll be - you'll barely feel it, and it'll be over before you know it, alright? Just a quick pinch, and y-you'll feel - you'll be good as new, Morty, I promise.”

Morty clenched his eyes shut, sweat dripping down his temples and back, clothes already soaked through and clinging uncomfortably to his body. He couldn't watch as Rick readied the needle and the injection site, flicking the barrel to ensure an accurate dosage and gently swabbing an alcohol prep pad over his separated talus bone.

“That’s it, that’s it, just hold still. Just let grandpa take care of you, that’s - you’re doing so good, sweetie. Such a - shh, oh, shh, th-there we go, such a brave little boy for grandpa, aren't you? Grandpa's good little boy,” Rick said against his ear, a slippery cascade of praise which made Morty flush and wither against his seat. There was something truly wrong with the way Rick spoke to him, a sort of vicious, possessive affection nothing could have ever prepared him to handle. 

Rick cradled the back of his neck, muddy fingers curling in his hair as he slid the needle into the space between his fibula and subtalar joint. The second Morty gasped, he bridged the gap between their lips, depressing the plunger with a steady sigh, licking filthy and forceful into his mouth. 

Morty snapped his eyes open, unready and unwilling, and instinctively braced his hands on Rick's shoulders to push him away; as soon as he did, however, Rick tightened his grip around his neck and leaned in harder against his chest, pressing his elbow down firmly on Morty's knee to keep his injured foot stable as he completed the injection. Morty groaned loudly as the thick liquid flowed between his shredded ligaments and unanchored bones, the sensation of his flesh knitting itself back together as the structural integrity of his ankle was restored akin to the fading ache at the tailend of a growth spurt. 

“That's it, Morty, al-already - it's already over, you’re already done,” Rick broke the kiss by half an inch to whisper, withdrawing the needle and tossing it to the jungle floor before reaching up to cup his grandson's face with both hands. “Doesn't that feel better, baby? Doesn’t it - it feels good, right?”

He didn't give Morty a chance to answer before he closed his mouth over his again, kissing like a man starved for satisfaction, a latria of lips and teeth and tongue petrifying in its single minded devotion. Morty held his eyes open wide, heart shrinking, hands shaking, head shouting at him to shove, to shriek, to shield himself in any way he could from the sheer, blinding shame of violation, but no matter how hard he struggled, his grandfather only held him tighter. Rick eclipsed his body, bending him back over the center console, grasping, grappling, aggrieving his grandson's every protest with ruthless persistence, and it was nothing like the last time he'd kissed him. 

It was so much scarier.

“Rick, wait -” he tried to speak, but it was no use. Rick only sighed, palmed the back of his head and pulled him in closer against him, cutting him off with foul, full strokes of his tongue. His breath was just as rancid as last time, if not worse, and Morty gagged as he licked near the back of his throat.

He just wanted it to stop. He beat at Rick's chest, and he shoved at his chin, and he desperately tried to whip his head to the side, but nothing deterred his grandfather. Rick held him in place with ease, and the instant Morty wished it could just be like the first time, slow, soothing, patient to the point of inducing sleep, he started to sob. 

“Stop, st-stop, please just _stop_ ,” he begged between their teeth, billowy and breathless, but Rick paid him no mind. Desperation built inside Morty's bones, a panicked, thoughtless yearning to yank himself free by any means necessary, and before he even knew what he was going to do, he bit down with over a hundred pounds of force per square inch on his grandfather's tongue. 

Rick jerked back with a sharp grunt, hand clamping over his mouth as he staggered back a couple feet. Morty stared at him, comprehension creeping in slow as the taste of salt and copper saturated his senses. He watched as Rick regained his bearings and stood to his full height, slowly lowering his hand to look down at the blood coating his palm, and Morty started to tremble as what he'd just done sunk in. 

Red drool sluiced down Rick's chin, glossy bright and gleaming in the dense shade. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, flicking it into the muck beneath his feet with a perfunctory snap of his wrist. Morty stared on in petrified silence as he pulled his flask from his breast pocket, took a healthy swig to swish over his bitten tongue before spitting it back out onto the ground, a mixture of blood and liquor Morty could smell over six feet away. 

Rick didn't look at him as he came around to slide into the driver's seat, and that made it so much worse.

He cranked the engine. He flipped on the radio. Neither of them said anything as it played far too loud in the small cabin. 

_“- love runs high. In this time, give it to me easy, and let me try with pleasured hands, to take you in the sun to promised lands, to show you every one. It’s the time of the season for -”_

Morty stayed still as any given Sunday, clutching his freshly healed ankle against his inner thighs as the percussion of the song rattled up through his seat.

_“What’s your name? Who’s your daddy? Is he rich like me? Has he taken any time to show you what you need to live? Tell it to me slowly. Tell you what I really want to know. It's the time of the season for loving.”_

He ducked his head behind his knees, hiding away from the tension building up thicker than the blood flowing between them, and Rick kept his eyes firmly on his flightpath the entire ride home.

…

Miraculously, Morty was going to graduate. 

It was the last week of school, and while his attendance had declined sharply since his grandfather had entered the picture, none of his marks had dipped below a C, and he was going to pass into eighth grade without issue. 

He didn’t feel proud. His mother told him due to the pressure put on Harry Herpson by the No Child Left Behind Act, they simply couldn’t afford to fail him. 

“The penalties are just too high, Morty. If they don’t hit their progress goals this year, they’ll have to turn the school over to a private company. There was never any way they’d let you fail.”

Morty picked at his baked ziti, unsure how to respond to that. His father shot his mother a glare over the breadbasket, and she stared back at him, a glass of Syrah rosé halfway to her lips and bafflement writ clear across her face. Jerry gestured to their son, and when she noticed Morty’s slumped posture and downcast expression, understanding entered her eyes.

“Oh, I mean - educational politics aside, I’m sure you did fine on your finals, sweetie,” she said, a half-hearted save at best, and Morty flinched, unable to meet her mildly concerned gaze. 

Her eyes were just like his. They shared the same deep set crease of the eyelid, the same gunmetal blue of the iris; they darkened with insult and flashed with interest in the exact same way, and Morty hadn’t been able to look his mother in the eye since the beginning of May. 

Not that she seemed to have noticed. 

Jerry sighed in quiet disappointment, and gave Morty a soft look, saying, “You did great, son. I spoke with your counselor last week and he said you don’t even need any remedial classes this year. Have you thought at all about what you want to do over the summer?” 

Morty hunkered down over his plate, withdrawing his hands to fold in his lap as he felt Rick’s eyes slide over him from across the table. “Oh, uh, I - I dunno, dad. I guess I j-just assumed I’d go to Camp Orkila again?”

“What, you don’t wanna check out the Equestrian Training Center with me and mom, bro?” Summer asked flatly, not looking up from her phone. “Gee, can’t imagine why that’s not your first choice.” 

“Summer,” Beth said, a little wounded. “We’ve been going to Gold Creek since -” she shot a look at her father, who kept eating in silence, and went on after a brief pause, “- since you were five. You’ve always loved it.”

Summer sighed, lowering her phone to rest her cheek in her hand, the picture of aggravated boredom. “Mom, this’ll be the tenth year in a row we’ve gone. I’m sorry, but I’m tired of horses.”

Beth looked puzzled, as if the idea of not being endlessly fascinated by horses had never crossed her mind, and as she discussed this stunning development with her daughter, Jerry smiled at his son, suggesting warmly, “You know you can always visit your nana and papa, Morty. They’re sad they couldn’t make it for Christmas last year and they’d love to see you.”

Morty automatically returned his father’s smile, tentative and small, and he said under the other conversation dominating the table, “Th-that might be fun. I really miss them.”

Rick jabbed his fork against his plate so loud everyone looked over at him, but he said nothing, and Beth and Summer’s discussion about changing up their summer break tradition smoothly resumed. Morty’s smile faded from his face, and he shrunk against the table, going back to picking at his food. Jerry frowned, glancing between his son and his father in law, and set a hand on Morty’s shoulder. 

“Just let me know, son, and I can give them a call. You’ve still got some time to decide what you wanna do.”

Morty could feel Rick’s eyes on him, on the spot where his father’s hand connected with his skin, and he diminished a little more into his seat. He struggled to fake an easy expression as he nodded and said, “Okay, dad, I’ll - I’ll be sure to let you know w-when I, um - when I make up my mind.”

The rest of the week passed without incident, filled with movies and busywork in class to round out the attendance quota as everyone waited impatiently for the final bell of the school year. Rick barely spoke to him the whole time, and far from offering him an ounce of relief, his grandfather’s dispassionate reserve fanned the flames of his anxiety into an uncontrolled burn that threatened the dry steppe of his composure. Morty tried to enjoy the break from his attention, to mimic the excitement he'd felt at summer's approach last year, but he just couldn't.

Last year, he had nothing to worry about but housebreaking Snuffles and working out how to say hello to Summer’s friends without sounding weird. He’d played video games and watched cartoons and went to the local council camp for the Boy Scouts of America. He'd built a Millennium Falcon out of legos with his dad, and he'd helped his mom with her herb garden and flowerbeds in the backyard, and he'd bickered with his sister about whose turn it was to do the dishes next.

Last year, he'd still felt like a child.

As it turned out, carefree innocence and crippling anxiety couldn’t coexist. Everytime he caught Rick staring at him, he felt his childhood slip a little further away. There was no pretending anymore, no way to ignore the intent in his eyes; Rick looked at him like he wanted to take him apart and put him back together; like he wanted to break him down and build him back up; like there was nothing he wanted more in every conceivable universe than to make him cry, and then be the one to brush away his tears.

Rick looked at him like he _wanted_ him, and in the wake of rejecting him so violently, so viscerally, Morty didn't know how to cope with that.

By the time he stepped off the bus Friday afternoon, Morty was wound up tighter than a two dollar watch. When his mother called him into the kitchen, he jumped so hard he startled Snuffles, and he spared a second to pat him on the head before making his way through the dining room to see what she wanted. 

“Hey there, Morty,” she said with a smile, adding a cutting board of diced potatoes to a large pot boiling away on the stove. She'd cooked more in the past six months than the past ten years, taking a special interest in Spanish cuisine. Morty breathed in the smell of browned beef and fresh cilantro, and stood on tiptoe to look inside the pot.

“It's cocido. I'm practicing for Sunday.”

Morty looked at her mouth, tilting his head. “What's on Sunday?”

She chutted at him as she stirred the pot. “I was right. You did forget.”

Morty ran through all the important dates he could think of in June, but nothing jumped out at him. She saw it wasn't clicking for him, and she said, “This Sunday is Father's Day, Morty. Your dad’s only been dropping hints all month long.”

“Oh. I-I guess I’ve - I’ve just been a little distracted lately.” Morty sank down on his heels, shoulders slumping in as he held his elbows close to his chest. “It’s kinda been a crazy year.”

Beth nodded, reaching up in the spice cabinet for a bottle of hot sauce. “I know this has been a bit of an adjustment for everyone. Your dad’s been feeling even more insecure than usual, so just be sure to get him a card or something, okay, Morty?”

Morty lowered his eyes as he said, “O-okay, mom.”

As he left the kitchen, his mother called over her shoulder, as if nothing more than an afterthought, “Oh, and your grandpa wanted your help with something, Morty. He's waiting for you in the garage.”

Morty stumbled over his own feet and caught himself on the living room partition. He looked down the kitchen, past his mother at the stove, to the garage fire door. He swallowed.

“D-did he, uhm, did he say what for?”

Beth shrugged, not taking her eyes off the pot. “No, but I'm sure it’s important. Run along and see what he wants with you now, sweetie.”

She didn't notice the way her son cringed and clung to the doorframe. She didn’t notice how his face paled, and his knees knocked, and his eyes flashed with fear. She tasted the stew, and looked at the ceiling, and mumbled to herself, “What could mom have put in it?”

On numb feet, he forced himself to walk past his mother and step into the garage. It took him a moment to spot Rick up under the ship, laid back on a mechanic's creeper and surrounded by all the accessories of engine maintenance. Morty tiptoed to his side, and announced himself with a timid little, “You - you asked for me, Rick?”

Rick banged down an oil filter wrench and slid a drain pan up under the chassis. Morty hurried back a couple steps as he rolled out and sat up, face concerningly neutral as he wiped his hands on a red shop towel. He was stripped to his wifebeater, halfway tucked into his khakis and generously stained with grease and petrol. 

“Hand me that tensioner there, Morty,” he said, focused on cleaning between his fingers, giving Morty no indication where to look for the item. Morty wrung his hands as he glanced around his grandfather, eyes sliding over all the equipment he was beginning to learn how to identify, and he bit his lip.

“Which one is that, Rick?”

Rick didn’t look at him, picking up a long, thin belt tool and an extension bar, attaching them and affixing a socket to its drive square. “It looks like the eccentric sheave on the bottom bracket of your bike, Morty.”

Morty blinked, staring blankly down at the bric-a-brac scattered over the concrete. “C-come again?” 

Rick stood up, flicking the jointed ratchet out to its full length, and Morty flinched at the sound it made. Stonefaced, Rick locked the long handled ratchet onto a bolt holding tension on an idler pulley towards the front of the engine block, swiveling it to release the stress on the serpentine belt. 

“Right there near the relay rollers and the intake hose, Morty, j-just hand it to me.” 

Morty could at least make out the hose, and he took a chance on a teardrop shaped piece of aluminum housing laid out beside it. He held it out to his grandfather, who was unwinding a worn out rubber belt from between a series of mounted casters. 

Morty watched as Rick loosened a pivot bolt to remove the old tensioner from the engine, before taking the new one and installing it in less than a minute. Confused and wondering if this was all Rick wanted him to do, Morty eyed the fire door. For a moment, he considered walking away and going up to his bedroom, but Rick finally looked over at him, and he knew that wasn’t an option. 

“Let me just start by saying,” he said, face flat and tone deadpan, “I really didn’t wanna have to take it this far.”

Morty paled. “W-what?”

Rick glanced at the time on his wrist, walking over to his lab coat where it lay thrown over a chair. He dug his portal gun out of one of its pockets, dialing in a destination as he said, “Get over here, Morty. I’ve got something to show you.”

He shot open a portal and waited by its side, back straight and expression betraying nothing of what might wait on the other side. Morty had never seen him quite so sober, and that alone was enough to set off alarm bells in his head. Every step he took towards him felt like the step before falling off of a cliff, and by the time he stood by his side, staring warily into the swirling vortex, his heart was ready to raise the white flag before the battle even began. 

“Where does this go, Rick?” 

Rick grabbed his arm, and said, “You’ll see, Morty.” 

With that, they set foot through the portal. The increasingly familiar sensation of falling out of space washed over his skin, and he closed his eyes against the cloying fluid that always felt like it was going to soak him through but never did. They arrived on a hillside overlooking a small city, backed by a state highway and parallel to a paved bluff where cars could park and enjoy the view. Hemlocks partially obscured the view of the guardrails lining the shoulder of the road, and while Morty had never seen it from this angle before, he knew exactly where he was. 

“Why are - what are we doing here, Rick?”

Rick sat down on the steep slope, setting down his portal gun and pulling out his pack of Newports. He lit one up with a match, and let the wood burn down close to his fingers while he pulled on his cigarette. Morty shuffled his feet as the silence dragged out. 

“Just sit down. It’ll only take a few minutes, Morty,” he said, dropping the match the second before it burned him. His voice was so even Morty shivered, watching as the little fire died out in the damp sedgegrass. Rick stared at the bluff across from them, posture relaxed and eyes bored, and Morty didn't see what else to do but sit beside him, and wait. 

Cars drove by behind them, most taking care with the mountainous curves but a few tearing by at breakneck speed. The rush of wind as they passed blew hard and warm over the back of Morty's neck, sweeping the smoke of his grandfather's cigarette down the hillside to catch up in the soft glow of the setting sun. It wasn't yet twilight, but the lights of the city already stood out in the valley, glittering like raw sugar sprinkled over a homemade shortcake. 

By the time Rick had finished his cigarette and used its fading cherry to light up another one, a vehicle slowed down to pull into the roadside viewpoint he was looking at. Morty immediately recognized the green paint, the wood paneling, the dents and dings lining its fender and doors; it was the station wagon.

And only his father was in it.

“R-Rick, w-what -” he started to ask, panic pulling his voice up an octave as he tried to scramble to his feet, but Rick only coiled an arm around his shoulders, hauling him in close against his side and shushing him quickly.

“Shh, shh, keep - gotta keep quiet now, Morty,” he said, breathing out a cloud of smoke so thick Morty had to stifle a shallow cough. Rick rubbed his back, looking down at him with the first glimmer of sympathy Morty had seen from him all week. 

“Your dad used to take you here, huh?”

Morty felt sick. He nodded once, eyes fixed on his father staring out over the city they’d both called home for over a decade. “He drove me up here a-after school sometimes, b-before you -” Morty swallowed hard and glanced down at his cross trainers as he went on, “- I mean, he always told me it was his favorite place to go to just - clear his head at the end of the day.”

Rick hummed, dragging on his Newport. He lowered a leg to lay flat against the overgrown grass, leaning back on his elbows and exhaling against the sky as the station wagon’s windows rolled down. A song bled out into the late afternoon air, blue and rhythmic, melancholia in F minor composed of soft cymbals, lilting piano and jazzy guitar.

_“- see the crystal raindrops fall, and the beauty of it all, is when the sun comes shining through. To make those rainbows in my mind, when I think of you sometime, and I wanna spend some time with -”_

Morty searched his grandfather’s face for answers, but there were none to be found. Rick bobbed his head in time with the beat, completely at ease in a way which did nothing to soothe Morty’s frayed nerves. Looking back at Jerry, he saw him mouthing the lyrics to himself, and Morty knew if he were to glance over, if he just turned his head to the left and looked up, he’d see his son and father in law spying on his private moment. 

But he never did. 

_“- the two of us, we can make it if we try, just the two of us. Just the two of us, building castles in the sky, just the two of us, you and I -”_

Jerry leaned over and opened the glovebox, and as he did, Morty saw the look in his father’s eyes. They were as hollow as an echo, as empty as shade, the eyes of a man who’d come to a decision after years of deliberation. Morty knew what was about to happen like he knew when a storm was brewing on the horizon; it was a shift in the air, a rumble in the distance, a gradual, unspoken charge that grew in intensity until the pressure of holding back the rain was impossible.

He screamed the second he saw the gun, but Rick tossed his cigarette and clamped a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet.

_“- we look for love, no time for tears, wasted water's all that is, and it don't make no flowers grow. Good things might come to those who wait, not for those who wait too late, we gotta go for -”_

A gunshot rang out across the hillside, startling a deceit of lapwings from one of the hemlocks halfway blocking their view. Rick let go of his face, pulling him closer as he shrieked and sobbed and wailed, continuing to rub soothing circles into his back as he shushed him, “Shh, shhh now, it’s alright, oh, it’s okay, baby. Th-that was it, that was all - it’s already over, sweetheart, settle down.” 

Morty struggled against him, banging his fists on his shoulders, crying out, “W-we have to - we need to call an ambulance, Rick! He needs - my dad needs -”

“Oh, sweetie,” Rick headed him off, hot and hushed and hatefully sympathetic, “Besides knocking your mom up at seventeen, this is the only time your dad got it in one shot.” 

_“- darling, when the morning comes, and I see the morning sun, I wanna be the one with you. Just the two of us, we can make it if we try. Just the two of us, building big castles way up high. Just the two of -”_

Morty lowered his hands, face red with anguish and nose dripping with snot and lips parted with numb horror. His voice crumpled in around the edges as he said, “No, no, no, no, _no_ , Rick, pl-please, no - n-not my dad, not my dad, not my dad, _please_.”

Rick pulled him into his lap, turning him away from the sight of his father’s lifeless body slumped against the doorframe, and cradled him close to his chest. “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s - hey, hey, it’s not your dad, baby, it’s not him. Your dad is fine, I promise, I - oh, baby, shhh, it’s alright, calm down, calm down now.” 

Morty stared up at him in paralyzed confusion, because that was every bit his father laying dead in their family car, and Rick sighed. “This isn't our dimension, Morty. This is one where Beth - _errp_ \- she cheats on Jerry with some new age, limp-dick pretty boy from work, and Jerry - well,” Rick glanced at the station wagon, and said, “- he doesn't take it well.” 

The shot echoed in Morty’s head, and the efflorescence of blood and brain exploded over the windshield was burned onto the backs of his eyelids, and he trembled in his grandfather’s lap as he said, “Take m-me home, Rick.”

Rick looked over him, down at the city beneath them. The silence stretched out, long enough for Morty’s stomach to begin to fill with lead, before Rick finally said, “Y’know, the - the Rick and Morty from this dimension abandoned it years ago for a chance to suck the council's collective dick. Y-your mom - she might really appreciate us staying after she finds out Jerry actually had the balls to go out with a bang.”

Morty’s chest felt like it was seized in a jawed vise. He struggled to breathe as he raced through his options, searching for a course of action that would take him away from this man and back to a dimension where his father was still alive, reading about beekeeping as a hobby and trying to convince his mom to visit a Titanic themed couples’ retreat and waiting to know what his son’s plans were for summer break. Rick shot him a shrewd look, sure of his plan before he’d even thought of it.

“You thinking of going for my portal gun and trying to get back home on your own, baby?”

Morty froze, and Rick sighed again. He picked up the gun where it lay beside them and held it out to his grandson. “Go on, Morty. Go ahead and try.”

Morty flicked his eyes between the gun and his grandfather’s face, sure it was a false play but too frightened to think beyond doing as he was told. He took the device from Rick’s hand, mimicking the way he’d seen him hold it and fiddle with its dials. He watched the fluid ripple in its tube, pointed it opposite the bluff, and pulled the trigger. 

Nothing happened.

In bright green letters, the panel read, _'ERR_.' Morty looked at his grandfather, face pinched with incomprehension and panic, and Rick leaned back onto his elbows with a shrug and a satisfied glint in his eyes. “It's gotta be coded to your genetic signature, sweetie, and e-even if it were, you just punched in the coordinates for a-a dimension where the South won the Civil War, and the Union and the Confederacy break down into a border war every couple decades. Your dad’s dead there, too.”

Morty dropped the portal gun from numb fingers, staring at his grandfather with a terror so total it tipped into a religious experience. Rick laid back, and stroked Morty’s thighs, and watched him as he sobbed until all of his strength deserted him, and he was too exhausted to hold himself upright anymore. 

Only when his grandson collapsed against his chest, shivering with tears and unable to so much as flinch when he wrapped his arms around him, did Rick finally say, “If you want me to take you back home, I’m gonna need you to promise me one thing, okay, baby?” 

Morty curled his hands up in his grandfather’s wifebeater, staring off into the middle distance through burning eyes, and he choked out, “A-anything, Rick.”

Rick tilted his chin up to look him in the eye, mouth a hard, cruel line as he said, “Don’t you _ever_ fucking bite me when I kiss you again, Morty.” 

The blood drained from Morty’s face at the pure venom in his tone. He knew his grandfather could be ruthless, and callous, and cold, but he’d never had any of that directed at him undiluted by affection before. He quivered, closing his eyes as yet more tears welled up in them, and nodded along. “I won’t - I won’t e-ever do it again, Rick. I - I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Promise me, Morty,” Rick said, voice so strict and severe Morty whimpered, mouth crimping as he did his best not to break into another fit of sobs he was too tired to handle.

“I pr-promise, Rick.”

Rick didn’t let go of his chin. He pinched it tighter between a thumb and forefinger until Morty gasped, opened his eyes and looked at him in a flash of starstruck pain. 

“I promise, grandpa Rick!”

Rick let up immediately, his fingers softening in approval, his face lightening in amiability. He rubbed Morty’s back, and he cupped his face, and his eyes were so, so fond as he said, “There’s my good boy.” 

Morty clutched the straps of his shirt, beside himself with grief and fright and the desire to see his dad again, and he begged without embarrassment or reserve, “Please, please, please t-take me home, R-Rick. I just w-wanna - I won’t - I’ll be good, grandpa, I promise, I promise I w-will be. I just - please just take us home, Rick.”

Rick, once again as patient and calm as he ever got, crossed his ankles and pillowed his hands beneath his head. A sly design entered his eyes as he relaxed against the slope and smoothly spoke. 

“Give grandpa a kiss then, sweetheart.”

Morty went perfectly still. He stared at the way the unkempt grass brushed against his grandfather’s unruly hair as he asked, “What?” 

Rick rolled his eyes, bored. “How'd playing dumb work out for you last time, baby?”

Shame brought color back to Morty’s cheeks, a touch of pink as his heart bruised itself against the bones meant to protect it. Without giving himself a chance to think, because there would be time enough to rake himself over the coals later, he screwed up his face, sealed his mouth shut tight, and surged forward to peck his grandfather on the lips. 

It was only for a fraction of a second, the barest brush of skin against skin, but it felt so heavy. It felt like giving more than he had to give; like overstretching until something inside of himself split open and started spilling into his blood. 

It felt like damaging himself in a way his body didn’t know how to fix.

He pulled back quicker than the bullet that had bored through his father’s skull, and he held himself stiff in Rick’s lap, and he waited.

Rick blinked up at him, bemused for a moment before he broke out into deep, uncontrollable laughter, and said, “Well, th-that’s a start, I guess.”

The saxophone played on from the station wagon’s radio, and Morty blushed brighter at the rough pleasure in his grandfather’s voice. Rick made no move to pick up the portal gun, staring up at him with an expression so indulgent and utterly endeared Morty couldn’t meet his eyes, and Morty lowered himself to rest against his chest.

“Can I, um,” Morty asked, drifting his hand over the swaying blades of grass by his grandfather’s shoulder, “... can I spend Father’s Day w-with my dad, Rick?” 

Rick tensed beneath him, but when Morty tucked his head up under his chin and lay his shivering fingers over his collarbone, he relaxed again. He breathed in the scent of his grandson’s hair, and he sighed.

“Fine, Morty. But only on one condition.”

Morty closed his eyes, saltwater sliding over the bridge of his nose as he retreated into a little world unto himself; one where he’d never met Rick Sanchez, and his mother always put his safety first, and his father would never let anyone steal him away from their family without a fight.

But he could smell the petroleum staining his grandfather’s shirt, and he could hear the song coming to an end beside them, and he could now see how easy it was for everyone he depended on to be ripped away from him. 

He nodded, and said, “Okay, grandpa Rick.”

Rick pet long lines up and down his back, the picture of patience, content to lay back as the sun sank over the cityscape and his son-in-law’s corpse cooled in the slow slide into nighttime, and he issued his ultimatum. 

“Tell your parents you want to spend your summer break with me, baby.” 

Morty flinched, eyes going wide, and he asked before he could stop himself, “Th-the whole summer?”

Rick chuckled at him, warm and a little mean as he said, “Y-you’re lucky I find how clueless you act fucking adorable, sweetheart. I didn’t even stutter on that one.”

Morty’s face burned even as his body went cold. He sank his teeth into his lower lip, breathing out hard through his nose as he thought of his dad asking him what he wanted to do for the summer. His throat closed up, but he managed to say again, “Okay, Rick.”

Rick hummed a note of praise, holding him too tight for too long before he finally picked up the portal gun and took them back home.

Home, however, was no longer a two storey house on a residential street in a small suburb outside of Seattle, Washington. It wasn’t his family, or his dog, or his crush on the new girl in math class. It wasn’t where he was born, or where he lived, or any specific point in any dimension across all of infinity. 

Home wasn’t a place.

It was a privilege.

_“- there need to be consequences when you break rules, otherwise you’ll never learn -”_

Morty held onto his grandfather long after they stepped back into his garage, and Rick welcomed his newfound neediness with reassuring hands and black sugar promises that went on in endless, hypnotic circles, “It’s okay, sweetie, it’s all gonna be okay. Shh, don’t worry, don’t - hey, it’s a-alright now, I’m - I’m not mad anymore. Y-you did so good, Morty, you handled that so well, such a good boy for me, aren’t you? I’ve got so many things to show you this summer, y-you’re gonna love it, baby, I-I-I know you will.”

Morty clung to him, and he let himself be soothed, because he understood now. 

Home was something his grandfather let him have. 

Home was nothing more than a concession Rick could take away to show him the consequences of not being a _good boy._

Home was wherever he said it was.

… 

On Sunday, Jerry took Morty to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma.

“They’re doing a show with an aardvark in the outdoor theater, son. Did you wanna go check that out, or would you rather just wander around the exhibits for a while?”

Jerry stood in front of the carousel adjacent to the main entrance, reading over one of the zoo’s informational pamphlets. Behind him, a few children rode brightly painted animals while their parents snapped pictures, shrieking in delight and brandishing big smiles for the cameras. Morty scuffed his sneakers on the asphalt and looked at the café in the opposite direction.

“Let’s get a drink first, dad. It’s really hot out.”

Jerry looked at his son’s jeans and shook his head. “I told you it was gonna be a scorcher, Morty. Why didn’t you wear shorts?”

Morty frowned and fiddled with the hem of his shirt. Playing fetch with Snuffles in boardshorts flashed in his mind, his grandfather sat at the iron wrought patio table, nursing a Guinness Stout and watching him toss an oversized stuffed elephant across the backyard for his little dog over and over again. He didn’t answer, and turned to walk into the Plaza Café.

They both got a bottle of Green River soda, and began walking past the petting zoo towards the Rocky Shores exhibit. Bright-billed puffins floated along clear pools, diving after the herring their handlers tossed into the water. Jerry read the placard for their enclosure. “Also known as sea parrots, the puffin’s beak changes color from black to bright orange in spring. It’s believed this change in pigmentation helps attract potential mates.” 

Jerry made a noise of mild curiosity, and smiled at his son. “Seems like these little guys have it a lot easier than we do, huh, Morty?”

Morty rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “I guess, dad.” 

Jerry’s smile faded a little, but he worked it back into place, and followed Morty down the trail to look at the polar bears. “So, have any girls caught your eye at school yet? You’re getting about that age, y’know.”

Morty thought of red hair held back by a blue headband, and flushed. “N-not really, n-no.”

“Oh yeah, now that was convincing,” Jerry said, shooting his son a knowing look. “C’mon, you can tell me about her. Having a crush on a girl is nothing to be embarrassed about, son. It’s perfectly normal for a boy your age to start having feelings for -”

“Dad, _please_ ,” Morty said, looking up at his father uneasily. “Can w-we save ‘the talk’ for another day?” 

Jerry paused, but accepted that his son wasn’t yet ready to discuss the birds and the bees with him, and sighed wistfully. He took a sip of his soda and watched a polar bear climb out of the water to laze on a sunrock beneath them. “Alright, son, just so long as you know that you can come to me whenever you’re ready to talk about the joys of puberty.”

“Dad!” Morty slapped a hand over his eyes, and Jerry laughed. 

“I wouldn’t be your dad if I didn’t embarrass you at least once a week in public, Morty,” Jerry said, ruffling his son’s hair playfully. Morty flinched under his touch, and Jerry blinked, mouth falling into a confused line.

Morty held still, waiting for him to ask a question he wasn’t sure how to answer, but he only withdrew his hand and said, “C’mon, let’s go look at the red wolves.” 

Morty gripped his soda with both hands, trying not to tremble, and trotted along after him. 

He couldn't tell if he were more relieved, or disappointed.

Slender wolves with sharp eyes and red tipped ears roamed a large, shady pen. Morty watched a couple pups play bow and tackle one another close to a den area while his dad again consulted the pamphlet. “It says here these puppies were born about a month ago, back on Mother’s Day.”

Morty tried to think of where he'd been that day. He knew it fell on a Sunday, so he'd have been with Rick, somewhere far away from home. Everything after the first of May was hazy, day after day of falling through portals and flying through space, and he couldn't remember where he'd been on Mother's Day.

He only knew it hadn’t been with his mom. 

A keen faced wolf with strikingly red forearms prowled out of the den to pick up one of the pups by its scruff and carry it back to their straw lined bed. In short order, she did the same with the other, before laying down on her side and encouraging them to nurse. Jerry saw the look on his son's face as he watched this, and carefully set a hand on his shoulder. 

“She didn't mind at all, Morty. She was -” Jerry squeezed Morty's shoulder, and said, “- she was just happy you were having an adventure with your grandpa.”

Morty repressed his shudder, eyes fixed on his feet. He inhaled deeply, and forced himself to say, “Sp-speaking of that…”

“What is it, son?”

Morty swallowed, spinning the bottle in his hands as he steeled himself, and said in a rush, “I wanna spend the summer with Rick, dad.”

Silence fell between them. Morty glanced up as his father again withdrew his hand. Confusion and concern stole over his face, and Morty gnawed his lower lip as guilt flooded his stomach.

“The whole summer?” Jerry asked, a sailboat that had lost the wind. Morty almost laughed and cracked a joke, _‘That’s what I said,’_ but knew that would only raise more questions he couldn’t handle. He nodded. 

“Yeah, dad. H-he said he’d take me anywhere I wanted, and I -” Morty closed his eyes for a moment too long, thinking of the goodnight kiss he’d shared with his grandfather last night, and his voice cracked as he said, “- I decided to take him up on the offer.”

Jerry frowned. “Morty, if you’re only saying yes to him because you’re worried about what your mom will think, or because you’re scared of -”

Morty fumbled his bottle of soda, and it shattered on the ground. Nearby visitors, a couple employees, and the wolves all turned to look at them, and Morty flushed under the sudden scrutiny. He ducked his head and squatted down to pick up the glass, going as quickly as he could to distract himself from the lump forming in his throat. 

“Hey, careful now, Morty. You could - hey!”

Morty hissed as he sliced his finger, dropping the glass shards and jerking his hand back to cradle it against his chest. Jerry sat back on his haunches to inspect the cut, brow drawn tight in worry. 

Jerry pulled them to their feet and called out to one of the employees who was making his way over to them with a broom and dustpan, saying, “Hey there, I’m sorry. My son was trying to pick it up and hurt himself. Is it alright if we just go -” he gestured in the direction of the bathrooms, and the employee waved him along with a polite smile that grew more sincere when Jerry thanked him. 

Morty winced as Jerry ran his bleeding finger under the tap, and said, “It’s okay, dad, I can - I can clean it myself.”

Jerry sighed, and let his hand go. The cut was nasty, hooking down deep into his index finger, but he'd live; it was nothing compared to completely dislocating his ankle, after all. The blood was steadily slowing, and Jerry dispensed some paper towels for him to put pressure on it until it stopped.

After Morty wrapped his finger and cupped his hand back to his chest, he noticed his father’s slumped shoulders, and a knife twisted itself in his gut. 

“Anywhere you want to go, huh?” Jerry said, put out and effortlessly pitiful.

Morty grimaced as the cut pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He inspected the way red spots bloomed through the paper towel as he said, “W-well, yeah. He can teleport and stuff.”

Jerry rolled his eyes, expression taking on a bitter edge as he muttered, “As if I could ever forget.”

The building acrimony was impossible to miss, and Morty was desperate to change the subject, so he suggested, “How about we go get lunch, dad?”

Anthony’s at Point Defiance was a seafood restaurant located on the park grounds, on a pier surrounded by rocky shores. They specialized in local catches, and the decor boasted a quaint, naval feel. The last time Morty had been here, it had been with his entire family - _‘not including Rick,’_ he corrected himself - Summer discovered she’d developed an allergy to shellfish, and swelled up like a frog’s vocal sac before being rushed to the Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital for treatment. 

Rick had cured her allergy back in February with a series of skin patches he’d instructed her to wear daily over the course of a month. He hadn’t bothered explaining the immunotherapy behind it, but Summer had done as told. Sure enough, her allergy disappeared, and she could once again enjoy crab legs and lobster tail. 

Being Father’s day, the restaurant was packed. Several large groups filled tables that had been pushed together to accommodate them, and rambunctious chatter filled the air. With only a party of two, they were quickly seated by an oculus window that overlooked a wraparound veranda and the windswept ocean. Storm clouds hung low on the horizon, but the sun still dominated the sky, shining over the bright blue waters and tempting many to enjoy an outdoor meal.

Halfway through ordering, Morty’s phone buzzed. By the time he finished, it buzzed again. As his father placed his order, he furtively took it out to check his messages under the table, and his heart leapt into his throat as he read them.

_Have you told him yet?_

_If you don’t answer, I’m coming over there, Morty._

Morty’s eyes went wide, his stomach flipping at the thought of Rick showing up in the middle of a crowded restaurant, and he typed back as quickly as possible: 

_I told him_

_I told you I would_

_Please don’t_

The waitress finished writing on her order pad and walked away, and Morty looked up at his dad. Jerry was staring after their waitress with an odd expression, and he said, “It’s such a shame how businesses like this don’t pay hardworking people like that a living wage.”

Morty tilted his head, wondering what brought on that comment. “Well, yeah, but th-that’s why we tip, right?”

“Tipping,” Jerry said, strangely serious, “is an outdated system that allows businesses to take advantage of their employees and shift the responsibility of paying them fairly onto their customers. It’s not even practiced all over the world. In a lot of other cultures, it’s considered extremely rude.”

Morty’s phone vibrated again, and he glanced at it as he said, “Okay, but that’s - that’s other cultures, and here, it’s rude _not_ to tip, so…” he trailed off, reading his grandfather’s message.

_Send pics and I won’t._

He flushed, unsure what Rick meant for him to send. A selfie? He recoiled at the thought of sending his grandfather a picture of his face. Looking out the round window at the beautiful view, he snapped a shot of the patrons eating at umbrella tables underpinned by sparkling, sunlit water and hit send.

“Just because it’s the custom here doesn’t mean it’s right,” Jerry went on, sipping his Coke. “Servers shouldn't have to worry about bad customers making the difference between whether or not they can afford their rent. Mandatory tipping should be abolished.”

Morty couldn't make heads or tails of why his father felt so strongly about this issue, and he was too distracted by his phone to dig into it. Their food arrived, and so did another message. 

_A picture of you, baby, Jesus._

Morty hunkered down in his seat, humiliated. He hated photos, and that was without knowing what Rick might do with one of him. Ignoring his dad and laying his left arm out over their table, he took a picture of his hand beside his entree and sent that instead, taking no notice of the fact his cut had reopened and was bleeding down his forefinger. 

He wasn't even able to slip his phone into his back pocket before a portal opened up beside them and Rick set foot onto the parquet flooring. Without a word, he snatched up Morty's hand, sprayed a small aerosol can over his injured finger, and glared at Jerry.

Dozens of customers stared at the man who looked as if he’d stepped straight out of a science fiction pulp rag, mouths agape and forks paused in midair as they struggled to make sense of what they’d just witnessed. The waitstaff all stopped what they were doing, the steady flow of work and conversation grinding to a halt in the wake of what they'd later conclude was a shared hallucination. Jerry, for his part, crossed his arms and glared right back at his father in law.

“Rick.”

“Jerry.”

Morty watched the spray glint and shimmer on his finger like a dragonfly's wings, adhering to his flesh and knitting his skin back together with stunning efficiency. The sting dissipated within seconds, and he breathed an automatic sigh of relief. Only after the adhesive had finished its job did he look up and soak in the tension radiating off his father and grandfather.

“I was wondering if you were gonna show up,” Jerry said, brows lowered, mouth a solid sneer. “God forbid you spend one Father’s Day in twenty with your daughter.” 

Morty gaped at his dad, unable to believe what he’d just heard come out of his mouth. Rick’s eyes widened before his glare took on a murderous edge, and he said, “It’s a meaningless Hallmark holiday designed to sell cards and travel mugs, Jerry. I’ve been there for her where it actually fucking counted.” 

“Oh, d’you mean when she gets blackout drunk and cries herself to sleep every Easter? Couldn’t help but notice you made yourself scarce this past April, too. How can you reconnect with your family if you can’t even bear to _remember_ it?”

Morty had never heard a louder silence in his entire life. He was acutely aware of all the eyes on them, a hundred strangers watching his family cut into one another as if they were nothing more than actors on a stage. He glanced up at his grandfather, and he would never forget the look on his face as he said, flat and quiet and trembling with rage, “Fuck you, Jerry.” 

Jerry flinched, a note of shame entering his eyes, but he didn’t apologize. Rick turned away from him, and told Morty in a tone that brooked no disagreement, “Get packed tonight. We’re leaving in the morning.”

Morty’s heart and shoulders sunk, but he nodded, and said, “Okay, grandpa Rick.”

Before Jerry could argue, Rick pulled out his wallet, threw a hundred dollar bill on the table, and was gone in a twist and surge of neon green.

Morty and Jerry stared at the money between their plates, waiting for the commotion of the restaurant to return. It took what felt like an hour but could only have been a couple minutes, but eventually, everyone turned their eyes back to their own families and meals, the waitresses and busboys getting back to their jobs, and Jerry leaned forward to hiss at his son, “ _Tomorrow_? You mother and I haven’t discussed this at all, Morty. He can’t just take you off like this!”

Morty picked up a biscuit and nibbled at it, looking out the window and trying not to think about the fact that he most certainly could. Instead of disagreeing, he asked, “W-what happened on Easter?”

Guilt lighted in Jerry’s eyes, and he followed his son’s gaze as he said, somber and subdued, “It’s when your grandmother died, son.”

Morty’s eyes widened. “That’s _awful_ , dad. H-how could you say something like that?”

“He’s awful!” Jerry shouted, so loud the patrons stopped to look at them again, and he lowered his voice to a level grind as he went on, “He waltzes back in here and expects us to roll out the red carpet for him, as if this -” Jerry snatched up the greenback and shook it in the air, “- can make up for all the years he’s been off playing _Star Wars_ and ignoring his family!”

Morty couldn’t deny that Rick was awful. He thought of crying into his chest the day before yesterday, the smug look on his face when he’d caved and kissed him back last night, but he found that despite all the ways Rick had hurt him, seeing his expression when his dad mentioned Easter brought him no joy. He shook his head, and said, “That still doesn’t make what you said okay, dad.”

Jerry snapped his mouth shut, dropped the money, and spoke no more on the matter. They ate quietly, remarking on the weather and the attractions they hadn’t yet seen, and Morty relaxed as it seemed they both wanted to salvage this outing. Their waitress dropped off the bill, graciously declining to comment on the strange scene in which they’d starred, and Jerry handed her a credit card to run. Morty was picking at his blackberry cobbler when she returned, an apologetic look on her face. 

“I’m sorry, sir, but your card was declined,” she said, well trained and carefully polite. “Do you happen to have another form of payment we could try?”

No one looked at Benjamin Franklin’s face on the table. Morty recognized the crushed, hollow look in his father’s eyes as he took his card back and dug through his wallet, and Morty knew he didn’t have another way to pay. He picked up the hundred dollar bill, and he slid it into the bill holder before handing it to the waitress, saying softly, “Keep the change, ma’am.”

She bowed her head, gave a sincere thank you, and left them to finish their meal. 

Morty took in his father’s defeated posture, the deep shadows under his eyes, the embarrassment that made him look so much older than he was. He remembered how his body had looked collapsed against the door card of the station wagon, his strings cut by his own hand, and he leaned forward in his seat to say, “I love you, dad.”

Tears touched the corners of Jerry’s eyes, and his smile was strained as he said back, “I love you too, son.”

… 

Morty couldn’t sleep that night. 

He lay on his side, hugging his pillow tight to his chest and staring at his suitcase in the gentle shine of his nightlight. Plastic glow in the dark stars faded into invisibility along the edges of his ceiling, and it crossed his mind that he was too old for them, now. 

He was still scared of sleeping in the dark, though.

He got up. He didn’t know what he was going to do with himself, but laying in bed awake all night, waiting for daybreak and the beginning of over two months of uninterrupted vacation with his grandfather, was absolutely out of the question. He padded downstairs, a vague plan of staring in the fridge and petting Snuffles forming in his mind, but before he could make it to the kitchen, a familiar song drifting from the living room stilled his feet.

_“- campanita de oro, torre de marfil, cántenle a mi niña, que se va a dormir -”_

Glancing around the dining room, he saw two empty bowls on the table, illuminated by the warm light stretching in shyly from above the stove around the corner. He tiptoed to peek through the partition between the dining and living room, and he saw his mother sat on the couch, her back to him as she sifted through a shoebox on her lap.

_“- esta niña linda, que nació de día, quiere que la lleven, a ver a su tía. Esta niña linda,que nació de noche, quiere que la lleven, a pasear en coche -”_

His feet carried him over the carpet before he made the decision to intrude upon his mother's yearly ritual. He cleared his throat to warn her of his approach, and when she looked over at him, quickly wiping her red eyes, he asked, “What's that song, mom?”

“Oh, it's just -” she returned a card she was looking at to the faded blue box as Morty sat down next to her, and said, “- it's something your grandmother used to sing to me when I was little, Morty.” 

The TV was on its default blue screen, casting everything in shades both calm and disconsolate. Morty held his hands in his lap, running a finger over the tender pink flesh of his freshly mended skin as he said, “Dad told m-me when she, um… about when she died, today.”

Beth nodded, slowly leafing through keepsakes Morty had never been allowed to see. “He mentioned that.”

Her voice was hard to read, but it often was late at night, after she’d soaked herself in Sangria and gone away somewhere her family couldn’t follow. Morty looked over his shoulder at the bowls on the table, and asked, “Did he like the stew?”

She cracked a small smile, and nodded, untying a baby blue ribbon from around a stack of photos and flipping through them. She paused on one, but with its back to the light, Morty couldn’t make out what was in it. Tracing a finger over the figures in the picture, she said, “Dad told me he’s taking you for the summer.”

Morty pigeon toed his feet and rubbed the back of his neck. “Y-yeah. I don’t know where we’re going, but, w-well…” 

He trailed off, unsure what to say. His mother picked up a wine glass from the coffee table, and as she sipped from it, Morty watched a rivulet trail down her chin, bright red droplets splattering down her blouse. With impaired reflexes, she set the stack of pictures down on the cushion beside herself, and Morty trailed her hand automatically. His eyes widened.

“Is that -” he swallowed, trying to make sense of what he was looking at, “- is that me, mom?”

She clinked her glass down, blinking at him in sedate, stop-motion timing. Following his eyes to the topmost picture, she held it up between them in the artificial light of the television on standby. A man held a squirming, sobbing toddler in his arms, surrounded by yellow balloons and golden streamers; the man wore a short beard, bomber jacket and blue jeans, and the baby was dressed in a shirt smeared with icing, a pair of overalls with a toy ship embroidered on the bib, and a little silver party hat that read _Birthday Boy_. 

“Yes, Morty,” Beth said, looking at the photo with fondness and something else Morty couldn’t make out through his shock and her insobriety. “This was your third birthday.” 

Morty recognized the entryway of their home, though the floors had since been refinished and that coat rack had been replaced. He recognized the painting of racehorses hung on the wall behind them. He recognized the welcome mat, and the staircase, and the door beneath it that now led to Rick’s room.

He recognized his grandfather.

_“- here I've been thinking you knew you were his favorite before he even showed back up -”_

Beth laughed, a light windchime of wistful sound, shaking her head as she said, “It’s safe to say you didn’t take much of a shine to him, Morty. No matter what he did, he couldn’t calm you down, and you cried whenever he came within fifteen feet of you. He tried to act like it didn’t bother him, but…” her laughter faded away, and Morty forced himself to look her in the eyes as she finished, “... we could all tell it did.”

Morty struggled to make sense of her expression, but it was so dim and distant and glassy he might as well have been trying to read moonlight reflected over a frozen lake. He wrenched his hands up in his jeans, and he asked, “W-was that the - the only time he visited, mom?” 

“Besides the day you were born, yes,” she said, setting the picture back down on top of the stack and reaching for the ribbon to tie them back together. “I didn’t see him again for nearly ten years after that party.” 

As he watched the faded ribbon cover his crying face, a sudden and strange urge to hold the picture in his hands overtook him, as if to better acquaint himself with its authenticity. Without thinking it over, he pointed at it, and asked, “May I please have that, mom?”

Beth paused. She let the ribbon fall away, and once again considered the picture. Morty was worried about her asking why, but she only tipped her head, saying, “Alright, Morty, but only on one condition.” 

Morty flushed, trying not to think of the last time he’d heard that phrase. He lowered his hand back to his lap as he nodded. 

“Take more pictures together, okay?” She smiled at him, a homesick smile for a home she never had, and Morty was struck all at once with how beautiful she was, and how little of himself he saw in her. She placed the photo in his hands, and she said, “This is the only one I have.”

Morty stared down at the picture, and wondered at how heavy it felt. He traced his fingers over its matte finish, just as his mother had, over his cherry-red cheeks and frightened eyes, his grandfather’s fearsome grin and enormous hands, and he was too young to put into words how it made him feel. He thought of his alternate mother, the one who had spent today planning a closed casket funeral for her husband instead of cooking a childhood stew for her father, and something inside of him splintered beyond repair when he agreed without exception. 

“I will, mom.” 

Beth’s smile grew a little more present, a little more warm, and she brushed one of her son’s curls behind his ear with the back of a knuckle and a thoughtful hum. “It’s about time for another cut, isn’t it, sweetie?”

Morty’s eyes misted over, his throat locking up with the urge to break down into full, body wracking sobs, and he couldn’t have been more grateful to hear his father call from the top of the stairs, “Beth, are you coming to bed? It’s nearly midnight!”

Beth withdrew, and Morty was again flooded with that unhappy mixture of disappointment and relief. She packed up the shoebox that held her entire relationship with her father, and she leaned down to kiss her son on the forehead with wine stained lips, and she said, “Goodnight, Morty. Make sure to tell us goodbye before you leave in the morning.”

With nothing more than that, she took her shoebox under an arm, and she carefully made her way upstairs with the help of the guardrail. Morty heard the master bedroom’s door close, the second floor going completely dark as it fell shut. He curled up on the couch in the light of the TV, staring at the picture in his hands, _“I’m always thinking of you,”_ echoing in his head as Father’s Day came to an end.

He hadn’t been lying.

Morty, even though it felt like digging at a wound with a dull, dirty blade, found himself wondering what must have been going through his grandfather’s mind when this picture was taken. Did he know? Had his mind already been made up back then? 

How long had he been thinking about doing this to him?

Morty looked at the baby’s squalling face, and stifled a hysterical laugh. There was a jagged piece of black humor in the fact that despite nearly ten years passing, his reaction to his grandfather hadn’t changed at all. Snuffles whined at his distress and got up from his bed to put his paws on the edge of the couch, and when Morty looked in his little black-button eyes and realized he wouldn’t see him for over two months starting tomorrow, he couldn’t keep it together anymore. 

He set the picture down, and he held his dog in his lap, and he started crying as quietly as he could manage. Snuffles stood up against his chest and licked at his face, making anxious little yips and whimpers as he tried to soothe his owner. Despite himself, Morty giggled through his tears at the ticklish sensation, and he welcomed the distraction from his pain, however slight. 

“Y-you’re such a good dog, Snuffles,” he said, petting his soft white fur. “I’m gonna miss you so much.” 

Snuffles tilted his head, one of his ears flopping over as he woofed gently at him, and Morty giggled louder. He scratched under his chin, and said, “I’ll call everyday to check in on you. J-just be good for my dad, okay? I know he can be a little short-tempered with you sometimes, but he’s - he’s going through a lot right now, so try to be on your best behavior for him, alright?”

Morty pet his dog and spoke to him quietly, saying goodbye little by little as the minutes ticked by. Time compressed in on itself, until all that existed was the moment he was in and the next one slipping along to take its place. He didn’t know how long he spent that way, but he knew the second he stopped. 

The light under the stairs flicked on, and Morty stopped talking.

The door swung open, illuminating the entryway and dispersing the long, blue shadows filling the living room. Morty didn’t dare look over while his grandfather walked through the dining area and into the kitchen. Snuffles’s ears perked and he barked inquisitively, and Morty’s heart began to race as he shushed him with an edge of urgency. 

Morty heard the fridge open and the tink and clatter of glass bottles jostling together, before it fell back shut, and Rick stepped back out of the kitchen. Morty held his breath as he paused at the partition, could feel his eyes on the back of his neck, and he cowered down, clutching Snuffles to his chest to keep him quiet, closing his eyes against the cool, crippling, well-conditioned fear of being caught all alone in the middle of the night. He waited.

Rick, however, didn’t say a word. He only cracked the cap off of his Blue Moon and walked back to his room, and once he was gone, Morty allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. 

Until he realized Rick hadn’t shut his door.

He swallowed hard, mouth dry as ashes and hands damp with sweat. He set Snuffles down on the floor and directed him to his bed, keeping his voice soft and encouraging as he said, “Go back to sleep, Snuffles. I-it’s okay. I’m okay now.” 

Snuffles gave him an unconvinced look, putting his paws on the couch cushion again and trying to get back in Morty’s lap, but Morty stood up, grabbed his picture, and pointed at the dog bed in the corner of the room. “You have to go to bed now, Snuffles. I’ll be fine, I promise.” 

Snuffles lowered his ears, but began to pad to his bed. He turned to look at Morty halfway, and Morty gave him a reassuring wave and a forced smile, saying, “Lay down. I’ll see y-you in the morning, okay?”

Snuffles gave a halfhearted wag of his tail, and dragged his paws to bed, circling it twice before yawning and lying down. He stared after his owner, watching him walk just as reluctantly to the open door under the stairs.

Morty didn’t knock. He stood on uncertain feet in the flood of light, holding the picture to his chest and hopelessly searching for his voice. Rick didn’t wait for him to find it, calling him in rough and rasping.

“Get in here, Morty.”

Morty crimped the edges of the photo in his fingers as he cringed against the doorframe. His grandfather’s voice was run-down with rotgut, ragged and tired and something else Morty didn’t want to name. Even though everything in him was screaming to just run away, he stepped through the threshold, and flinched again when Rick said, “Close the door.”

Morty did so, chin in his collarbone, and the click of the latch was as loud as the crack of the gun his father had pressed to his temple. The army green carpet crunched under his weight, and a marmalade orange glow emanated from a lava lamp on a bedside table. As Morty looked at it, the paraffin wax inside the thick glass seemed to still, but his grandfather sipped his beer and sighed, and Morty turned his attention onto him. 

Rick was sat on the edge of the cot, knees spread wide and beer bottle dangling from his fingertips between them. He was shirtless, dressed in nothing but pajama bottoms and the flush of intoxication, watching his grandson with eyes that reminded Morty of the red wolves at Point Defiance. Morty stared at his feet, realizing he’d never seen them bare before. They were massive, nearly three times the size of his own, with surprisingly neat nails and smooth skin compared to his hands. 

“Come here, baby,” he said, patting beside himself. Morty didn’t let himself think, and sat down next to him, eyes planted on the ground and picture held over his heart like a paper shield. Rick tipped his head, just as lethargic as his mother had been, and asked, “What’ve you got there?” 

Morty clutched the photo tighter, and Rick coaxed him to lower it with a hand on his forearm. All was quiet as his grandfather stared down at the two of them, casting back a decade to that day in early October, and Morty didn’t know what he wanted to hear. He didn’t even know why he’d asked his mother to let him have this picture in the first place.

Rick drank, and pulled him in close, and spoke low in his ear, “I’ve waited so fucking long for you, sweetheart.”

Tears slid with swift misery down Morty's face, dripping from his chin to stain the picture’s surface. His mother’s voice drifted through his mind, detached dinnertime conversation detailing a particularly heinous case of abuse she'd dealt with at work that day.

_“- it’s barbaric by today’s standards, but it used to be common practice in the art of breaking horses. They’d tie a yearling up to a patience pole without food or water, and if they were trying to desensitize it to loud noises, they'd fire a gun off by its head until it stopped spooking -”_

Morty remembered how uncomfortable he’d been with her choice of words; _‘the art of breaking’_ hit him seven levels of wrong and he had long wondered why she had chosen that exact phrasing. As Rick brushed his hair back and turned his chin to kiss his forehead, though, a sick reflection of her soft goodnight, Morty’s confusion cleared into painful understanding.

These things took skill. They took patience, and preparation, and the power of imagination. There was nothing unplanned in breaking an animal’s spirit. 

There was nothing unplanned in breaking his. 

Rick finished his beer, throat working lazily around the last of the summer ale, and he let the bottle clatter to the ground. Morty jumped, nearly tearing the picture in half in his anxious grip, and Rick plucked it from his hands, placing it beside the lava lamp. Morty frowned and reached for it, saying, “H-hey, wait, my mom g-gave that to me, Rick, don't -”

Rick paid him no mind, picking him up to hold him side-saddle in his lap as he chuckled and said, “Yeah, well, your mom gave you to _me_ , M-Morty. Pretty sure that outranks any property rights you - _urrgh_ \- you might happen to have.”

Morty looked stricken, and Rick flashed his teeth in malicious satisfaction. He brushed his lips against his grandson’s pale, damp skin as he said, “She told me I could do whatever I wanted with you this summer, sweetie.”

Morty’s breath hitched. He stared at the picture on the bedside table, crinkled and glinting in the bitter orange glow of the lava lamp. Its wax stretched and sculpted itself with a strange sense of direction, and Morty’s eyes slid up to watch it while Rick kissed at the soft swell of his cheek, down the naked line of his jaw, over the slight curve of his chin, coiling long arms around his waist and pressing him tight against his bare chest. 

As Morty watched the wax flatten and elongate and shape itself in the teardrop philter, a sudden calmness overtook him, like the delicate state before slipping off to sleep. His fear and sadness bled away, leaving nothing but quiet acceptance in their wake, and he said dimly, “You can.”

Rick paused. He glanced at Morty, followed his line of sight, and laughed in understanding. “Nice to be on the same page for once, baby.”

Morty gazed at the shifting wax, his heart rate slowing down and his breathing evening out. Rick skated cool hands under his shirt, skidding over his stomach, slinking up above his ribs to play over his nipples, and Morty shuddered at the dart and dash of electricity the sensation sent down his spine. He arched his back, lips parting, eyes slipping halfway closed, and Rick rolled the rough pads of his thumbs over his grandson’s nipples until they peaked up prime and pink. Morty gasped, and Rick chuckled. 

“Y-you like that, Morty?” he asked, working at the tender flesh with watchful deliberation. He stared at Morty’s face, at his darkening irises and flushing skin, and Morty pressed his knees together under the scrutiny, a spark of warmth lighting up beneath his stomach. He didn’t answer, but Rick didn’t seem to need one. 

The wax took on the clear, recognizable lines of the human form, and Morty watched in confused fascination as the figure became more and more detailed; a pleated skirt, a collared blouse, feathered, shoulder-length hair held back by a headband to showcase kind, almond-shaped eyes. 

It was Jessica. 

Rick scraped calloused palms over the sides of his ribs, kneading his nipples in little circles as he did so, and Morty’s mouth fell open in a sudden moan. His legs curled up to his chest, his hands flexing in his lap, his toes digging into the sheets, and his grandfather groaned so deeply he could feel it throughout his entire body as he said, “So sensitive for me, baby, _fuck_. Knew it - I knew - I fucking knew you would be. Th-that feel good, sweetheart?”

Again, Morty didn’t answer, but Rick didn’t seem to care whether or not he got verbal confirmation. He listened to Morty’s body and it told him everything he wanted to hear. Before Morty could even think to protest, he pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the ground, and Morty shivered, his skin prickling up in gooseflesh against the mild chill in the room. 

“R-R-Rick,” he said, blushing red as fire when his voice came out whiny and breathless and cracking with heat, “Rick, wait - I don’t -”

Rick laid kisses on his trembling shoulders, in the hollow of his collarbone, down the insubstantial line of his sternum, all while relentlessly rubbing and rasping his calloused thumbs over his grandson’s nipples. Morty cut off into another high-pitched gasp, and Rick glanced over at the lamp on his bedside table. He huffed in amusement.

“Jessica, huh?” he asked, smirking. He leaned up to lick at Morty’s earlobe, and said, “Imagine what she’d think if she could see you right now, baby.”

Morty eyes opened wide, a new level of shame revealing itself in this waking nightmare. He saw it, just as he had seen Summer’s reaction at the thought of telling her what Rick did to him on the first of May; the twisting lip, the recoiling hands, the cold, dead, flat eyes of pure disgust. He choked and turned away from Jessica’s smiling face, setting his hands on his grandfather’s bare shoulders for something, anything to keep him from falling into the pit of other people’s shock and repulsion. 

Rick ran his hands along his back, jagged canines on full display as he said, “That’s right, th-that’s it. Hold onto me, baby, there you go - j-just relax, just let me - let grandpa take care of you, okay? This is gonna feel so good, sweetie, I promise.” 

He laid him down on the cot, spreading his legs wide and driving a thigh between them; Morty startled and moaned, wrapping his arms around his grandfather's neck as his cock thrummed warmly with blood at the sudden stimulation. Rick kept one foot on the floor and slid his forearms under his grandson's shoulders to press their chests flush together, voice equal parts reassuring and unhinged as he said, “Just relax, just stay calm. I’m just gonna - shh, shhh, now. You’re gonna love it, Morty, I just - fuck, I’ve gotta see you come for me, baby, that's all, th-that’s all for now, I swear, I swear.”

“W-what? Rick - wait, grandpa Rick, _no_ -” Morty broke off in another moan, and he might as well have been saying no to a wildfire. He turned away, hands wrenching up in the pillow on either side of his head as Rick gripped his hips and pulled him down harder on his thigh, forcing him into a slow, steady grind that left him panting and shivering and desperate to disassociate from his body.

His eyes glazed over as he stared at the glowing wax beside them, and he wondered what it was. Jessica melted away, and it molded itself this time into a family portrait; his mother and father stood behind him and his sister, Summer’s arm thrown around his shoulders, his parents embracing one another with loving smiles. Snuffles bounded between their feet, his tail wagging as he chased after a bouncing ball. 

As his grandfather rocked him up and down, persuading him into arousal and sweet-talking him into acceptance, his gaze flicked between the happy picture inside the lamp, and the crumpled photo beneath it. He looked at Rick’s fierce expression, the unyielding cage of his arms as his three year old grandson struggled to free himself from his grip, and a poison burned inside Morty’s veins. A quarter of his blood tainted everything inside of him, and he knew there was no escaping the connection between them. 

There was no escaping his grandfather. 

He sank back into the cot, and Rick rewarded him with a sigh and a deeply satisfied, _“Thatta boy.”_

Morty focused on his family in the lamp, letting that strange calmness wash back over him. Summer caught him in a headlock and gave him a noogie like when they used to play wrestle on the living room floor over the remote, and his dad held his mom’s hands and twirled her to a song that wasn’t playing but Morty could hear all the same. Snuffles stood on his hind legs, silently barking up at him for attention as his sister grinned and said without sound, _‘Say uncle, baby bro.’_

Rick kissed down his chest, mouthing over his pert nipples hot and inhospitable, stoking the embers under his abdomen into a fire that threatened to eat away at his sense of self, and he didn’t feel like a person in his arms. 

He felt like a puppet. A thing fashioned of wood and string, made to perform on a stage for an audience of one. 

Even as he relaxed and moaned and clung about his grandfather’s shoulders, tears dripped across the bridge of his nose, back into his hairline and onto the pillowcase. Rick kept talking between kisses, and his voice was what Morty would remember most, the sharp edges of his desperation, the suffocating heat of his excitement as he said, “That’s it, there w-we go. There’s my baby - there’s my sweet baby. It feels good, doesn’t it? Aren’t you close? Let me see it, Morty, let me see your face when you - fuck, baby, j-just come for me. Come for grandpa, now, c’mon.” 

Morty heaved a soft sob and turned away from the aching innocence of the scene inside the glass. Rick rocked him so firm and unwavering it was impossible not to trip over his breath and curl his fingers up in the hair at the nape of his grandfather’s neck, and when Rick grunted in his ear and tightened his grip on his hips, Morty cried harder. The flames roiled and snaked inside his stomach, between his thighs, a flickering, fork-tongued burn that he stopped trying to refuse. 

Rick swallowed his scream when he came, sealing their lips together the second he started seizing under him, and Morty sobbed out all his misery and all his pleasure into his grandfather’s mouth. 

It felt like losing everything. It felt like giving everything. 

It felt like dying, and it felt so good.

When Rick pulled back to stare down at him, eyes candent with a cruel tenderness Morty couldn't bear to see, he brushed his curls away from his ear and breathed out against his skin, “I knew you'd love it, sweetie.”

Morty cried in near silence, wracked with shivers that rattled down to the very marrow of his bones. Rick drew himself fully on the bed, laying down between the blueprint plastered wall and his convulsing grandson, and gathered him in his arms to soothe him through the aftershocks of his first orgasm. “That was so good, Morty, y-you did so good for grandpa. Don't worry, don't - shh, baby, j-just wait a minute, okay? It'll calm down, it'll pass, just - c'mere, I've got you, I've got you. Grandpa's got you, sweetie, it's okay, it's okay, I promise it's okay.”

Morty allowed the illusory truth of repetition to drown out his panic, and Rick had no problem with repeating himself. He went on sweet and rocksteady, a suckerpunch of praise to knock the bitter taste out of his mouth, “So precious, so perfect, such - such a good little boy for me, Morty. God, you did so fucking good, letting me take care of you like that. Don't you - do you get it now? Do you feel it, baby?”

Morty curled in on himself, wincing at the sensation of ejaculate soaking through his boxers and cooling over his skin. He didn't know what he was supposed to feel. He didn't know what he was supposed to say. Rick laid on his side, cradling him back against his chest, slipping a hand beneath the waistband of his pants to slick his fingertips through his grandson's come.

“I told you I wasn't gonna hurt you, Morty,” he said, withdrawing his hand to show Morty the watery, translucent semen coating his fingers. “See, sweetie? This is - fuck, baby, this is what I want.”

Morty stared on in distant dismay as Rick licked his fingers clean, eyes falling half shut in transported bliss as he tasted his grandson's come. 

“That’s disgusting, Rick,” he said, stunned.

Rick chuckled, reaching back down beneath Morty's waistband for more as he said, “What's that say about you for making it for me, then?”

Morty flushed red as his mother's wine, and Rick nosed behind his ear, chuckling harder. “Complain all you want, Morty. It's just gonna make it that much better when you start begging me to fuck your tight little ass until you come screaming my name.”

For the span of a few heartbeats, Morty went perfectly still and silent, before he broke down into brutal, unbridled, bright blue sobs. Rick immediately clamped a hand over his mouth, his shushes switching to urgent as he glanced up at the ceiling. “ _Shut_ _up_ , Morty. D'you w-wanna wake your goddamn parents up?”

Morty's eyes opened wide, but he couldn't stop crying. He tried to suck in air through his grandfather's hand, but it was impossible to get enough. Panic reached a fever pitch as he struggled to breathe and sob at the top of his lungs, but Rick pinned him down with his entire body, voice softening as he went on, “Be quiet, c-calm down. It's gonna - I know it sounds - oh, shhh, be quiet for grandpa, settle down for me now. It's not gonna be that bad, I - fuck, I'll - I'll show you, okay? Just - just look.”

He looked over at the lava lamp, forcing Morty to look at it, too. As his grandfather stared at the orange wax, the image of their happy family melted away, falling back to reform into a new picture; a round face framed by short curls, a slender, heaving chest dotted with freckles, thin thighs thrown over a narrow waist and pressing in so tight they trembled.

Hands reached out from an unseen figure, and when the boy grabbed hold of them to brace himself, Morty realized he was seeing himself from his grandfather's perspective.

“See, baby?” Rick asked, slowly lightening his hold as Morty stilled once again. “Does that look so bad?”

The little paraffin version of himself sank back on his grandfather's cock, eyes slipping shut and lips parting in a silent moan as he did so. He tossed his head back, forehead gleaming with sweat that dripped down his temples, and he threaded his fingers between the ones holding him up before he began to ride the cock deep in his ass. 

In numb, transfixed fascination, Morty watched himself take ten inches with an expression of pure, overwhelmed ecstasy. Rick let go of his mouth, leaving a cool smear of come on his cheek that glistened in the soft glow of the lamp, and after he laved the stain clean with his tongue, he said, “I want to be gentle with you. I want it to feel so fucking good you dream about me doing it again, Morty. I want you to love it, baby, God, I - I want - I just want -”

He pulled his grandson onto his chest, and he framed his face in his hands, and there was no denying the sincerity in his voice when he said, “I just wanna make love to you, sweetheart.”

Morty stared up at him, pale as a rosebud cut too soon from the bush, and he whispered, “But it’ll be rape, Rick.”

Rick hummed, and thumbed at his tears, and his smile wasn’t smug as he asked, “Why can’t it be both?”

The light dimmed in Morty’s eyes, and he diminished under his grandfather’s gentle touch, and he died a little more inside as he let Rick kiss him, and console him, and promise him there was no reason to be afraid. 

Summer break stretched out before him, unwelcome, unwanted, uninvited. He glanced back at the lamp, at his grandfather’s vision of him taking his cock slick and full and hard, gasping and moaning and wrapping affectionate arms around his neck to whisper something in his ear with an easy smile. Morty's eyes fell to the picture of the two of them at his third birthday party, and a sheer, speechless despair engulfed him as Rick's voice echoed in his head. 

_“- I’ve waited so fucking long for you, sweetheart -”_

There was nothing that could convince him to stop. There was nowhere Morty could go to hide. There was no one he could go to for help.

Rick was going to take his virginity whether he wanted him to or not, and he was going to force him to physically enjoy every second of it, and it was only a matter of time before he did.

It was only a matter of a hundred and eleven days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The songs used in this chapter are _Time of the Season_ by the Zombies, _Just the Two of Us_ by Bill Withers and Grover Washington Jr, and again, _This Pretty Girl_.
> 
> It took a few false starts, but I did it! And it didn't even take four years, you guys, how amazing is that? 
> 
> Thank you so, so much to everyone who commented, and to anyone I didn't respond to, I apologize. I honestly get down on myself for not writing faster and going in the wrong direction again and again, and then I feel bad about writing back instead of getting the chapter done, but believe me, I've read and loved and luxuriated in each and every comment. They mean the world to me and make me all the more determined to finish this story and share it with anyone who wants to take the time to read it. 
> 
> This marks the halfway point. I'm conservatively estimating four more chapters after this, for July, August, September and October. I really hope this one was worth the wait, and I'd love to hear what you all thought of it. Any favorite turns of phrase or pieces of dialogue? Did this direction surprise you? Any ideas about how it will develop from here and what Rick will do next? 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading! :) 
> 
> Signing off,
> 
> firstbornking


	5. July

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: graphic description of images of force feeding; threats of force feeding; disordered eating due to stress.

Morty picked at the bowl of rice in front of him. An assortment of small dishes filled the low dining table, consisting of all manner of meats and vegetables prepared in a dozen different ways. Despite the variety of foods on display, not a single one struck him as appetizing. 

Beside him, Rick sighed.

“Morty, we’ve been over this,” he said, the tone of a man trying to reason with a particularly picky child. “You keep on misbehaving, you’re gonna force me to do something that neither of us are gonna enjoy.” 

The sultry heat of late July soaked everything, seeping through the sliding shoji doors and into their guest room. Shadows of plum tree branches danced over the tatami mats and across the irori grill set in the center of the floor. Calm wind and quiet birdsong floated over the hot springs and stone pathways outside, and not for the first time, Morty thought what a shame it was that he could appreciate none of it.

He awkwardly adjusted the chopsticks in his hand and collected a small bite of rice, gnawing his lip before forcing himself to put it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, and swallowed with difficulty, and didn’t make eye contact as he said, “I-I’m not trying to - to misbehave, grandpa Rick.”

He wasn’t. His stomach just protested everything except water, and he was sick of throwing up all hours of the day and night. Given the pounds he was losing which he simply couldn’t afford to lose, however, his grandfather accepted none of his excuses. Rick watched him eat, displeased and unimpressed, and Morty didn’t know how he wasn’t meant to shrink under those basilisk blue eyes. 

“Whether you’re trying to starve yourself or not doesn’t change the fact that that’s what you’re _doing_ , Morty,” he said, leaving no room for complaint or rebuttal. He pushed a dish of sliced peaches towards his grandson, and when Morty glanced at it as if it were a putrid sludge writhing with maggots, went on in that same, strict tone, “I think I’ve spared the rod with you a few too many times. Maybe - I hate that it’s come to this, but maybe some tough love would serve us better here.”

Morty stilled. Rick poured himself another shot of sake, pulled out his crumpled pack of cigarettes and lipped one out to hold between his teeth. After he leaned forward to pull it alight over the burning candle centerpiece, he said, “Hand me your phone, baby.”

Blood slowing to a crawl through his veins, Morty didn’t move. The smoke wafted over the table, weaving around his neck, whiling its way into his lungs despite his attempt to hold his breath. The smell was good morning and good night, a comfort that was both familiar and deeply upsetting in its familiarity. He made no move for his phone, and Rick fixed his cigarette between his first and middle fingers, rolling his eyes.

“What, you worried about me looking through the messages from your dad?” Rick scoffed, and put on a tone of vicious mockery as he said, “‘Are you sure everything’s okay? You know you can always come back if you’re feeling homesick, son.’”

Morty went rigid, staring down at the kaiseki meal artfully arranged before them, and Rick went on unkindly, “‘Is your grandpa treating you well? He’s taking care of you, isn’t he?’” 

Rick shook his head, sneering at his son in law’s concern, and muttered more for his own benefit than Morty’s, “Real fucking rich coming from a man who can’t afford to keep his own goddamn kids fed.”

Morty frowned, a weak defense tumbling off his tongue before he could bite it quiet, “Th-that’s not what he w-was asking about -” but Rick slid his cigarette back between his lips and slipped a hand down his grandson’s backpocket, fishing the phone out for himself without any more fuss.

“I’m taking care of you better than he ever could, isn’t - isn’t that right, baby?” he asked, voice vibrating the very floor they sat upon as he squeezed Morty’s ass through his jeans. 

He wasn't looking for an answer.

Morty watched in silence as Rick unlocked his phone, swiping through the pattern lock without hesitation and sipping at his stone cup of sake. He glanced through the recently used apps, pausing on the article entitled, _‘Incest Laws and Criminal Charges.’_ He cast his grandson an amused smirk, but didn’t comment.

Embarrassment, too, was becoming achingly familiar. He thought he’d known it well before; he remembered tripping over his own name as he struggled to introduce himself to a classroom full of children eager to try on cruelty just to see how it felt against their skin. Compared to his grandfather, however, their unkindness felt clumsy and uninspired. 

Rick’s cruelty was a thing well worn, an old suit tailored long ago to a perfect fit. His grandfather could humiliate him with a cool glance, an unassuming smile, the barest brush of a knuckle over his flushing cheek. Where a bully like Frank Palicky had to write his brutality large to make Morty feel small, Rick had only to whisper in his ear, _“Less than a hundred days, now, sweetheart.”_

Rick typed something into an image search, and Morty focused on the orange cherry creeping its way to the orange filter. The mild, numbing odor of menthol sank into their robes, mingling with the savory tang of seared beef and fermented cabbage, and Morty pressed a hand over his mouth to quell the nausea clawing its way up his throat. Rick set his empty cup down, and pulled him in close to look at the picture he’d brought up on the phone, exhaling slowly through his nose as he did so. 

Morty had to blink through the smoke to make sense of what he was looking at. At first, he thought it was a BDSM scene, but it didn’t take long to realize the woman in the picture couldn’t have possibly consented to the situation she was in. She was terribly emaciated, bound to a stiff backed chair with a large rubber tube in her mouth, eyes wide with pain and terror as two men in prison guard uniforms held her head and shoulders in place and funneled liquefied food down her throat. He gasped, his first instinct to flinch back, to spare himself the sight, but Rick held his chin in place and said around the cigarette perched in his mouth, “Look, Morty.” 

Morty’s eyes welled with tears, both from the irritation of the smoke and the horror of man’s inhumanity to man. His mouth crumpled, his lower lip buckled, his vision blurred but not enough to _not see_ as Rick swiped to another picture; a man with his forehead and neck buckled to a metal post, eyes bulging as his jaw was pried open with a Jennings gag and a hard plastic tube was fed into his stomach.

“See this, Morty?” Rick asked, cold and clear as a winterbourne spring, pinching his grandson’s jaw, demanding immediate compliance. Morty would have nodded, but Rick held his head still, took another drag on his cigarette, and said on a smoke-filled exhale, “This is called force feeding, sweetie. It - it’s pretty straightforward, don’t you think?”

Rick didn’t let go of him, so Morty didn’t try to nod again. He swallowed down the saliva pooling in his mouth, which did nothing to help his queasiness, and whispered, “Y-yes, gr-grandpa Rick.” 

Rick scrolled through picture after heinous picture; struggling mental patients; hunger striking prisoners; caged, squealing pigs. All of them held in place by ropes and belts and medical professionals, shackles and chains and prison personnel, trammeled in and flashing the whites of their eyes in absolute agony. Morty sobbed, chest cracking open wide and raw and hot with fear, and Rick watched the tears bleed down his face, pulling the cherry ever closer to his lips.

“It’s not what I have in mind when I say I wanna hold you down and stretch you open, but, well -” he shrugged, as if this were a minor inconvenience on par with having to make do with his second favorite brand of whisky, “- needs must when the devil drives, baby.”

An image of a duck came up, metal bars pressed tight against its sides as a thick metal pipe was thrust down its gullet, a yellow mash of fat boiled corn shot down its esophagus via pneumatic pump. Beneath the food and feces, its feathers were the same soft, pretty white as his dog’s fur. Snuffles flashed in his mind, the doleful look in those black button eyes as he bade his family goodbye, and he broke back down.

“Y-you _wouldn’t_ , Rick,” he said, sobbing in great, heaving gusts of desperate disbelief. “You _wuh_ -wouldn’t, you w-wouldn’t, _you wouldn’t._ ”

Rick sighed again, set the phone down and snuffed out his cigarette in his empty cup. He released his grandson’s chin, only to draw him close into his side and rest his own atop Morty’s head. He waited for the sobbing to die down to intermittent sniffling before he said, “I know - hey, now, I know it seems a little extreme, Morty, but if you won’t take care of yourself, I’ll have to take certain measures to do it for you. You think - what, you think I-I’ll just sit back and watch you starve yourself in some stupid bid for control?”

“I - what? I’m not -”

Rick shushed him, stroking his arm and leaning back to tip his face up, to look him in the eyes as he said, “I’m gonna take care of you whether you want me to or not. I’m gonna do a lot of things whether you want me to or not, Morty. No matter how much you fight, no matter how much you struggle, _you_ _are going to eat_. Do you understand me?” 

Morty, as much as he didn’t want to, understood. He understood being held down, and he understood struggling with every ounce of strength he had only to realize he wasn’t strong enough to escape, and he understood that there was more than one way to be raped.

He nodded, and real softness entered Rick’s eyes. His grandfather tucked his hair behind his ears, and kissed his forehead, and said, “I don’t wanna hurt you, sweetheart. You keep on hurting yourself, though, and you’ll - well, you’ll force my hand.”

He picked up a peach slice from the small dish, and held it to his grandson’s mouth. Morty licked his salt-stained lips without thought, and he didn’t miss the way his grandfather’s pupils dilated into shining, black craters as he said, “Now do us both a favor, and _eat_.”

Morty’s stomach rolled, and he wept. “It’ll m-make me sick, Rick.”

Rick was unmoved. He brought the glistening fruit closer, and said, “I’ll give you some medicine to help you keep it down, baby. It’ll get easier, I promise.”

Morty kept crying. He didn’t want it to get easier. He didn’t want any of this to get easier. He wanted the sun to go black, and the sea to go still, and the stars to fall from the sky all at once. He wanted everyone to stop going on about their days like nothing was wrong, like the world wasn’t ending, like his pain and his fear and his suffering meant nothing to anyone.

The thought of life going on like normal after everything his grandfather had done to him made him so sick he didn’t know how his heart kept on beating away inside his chest. 

“Open your mouth, Morty.”

Morty did, and even though he didn’t want them to, peaches still tasted sweet. 

Even though it made him sick, he was starving, and his body ached for more.

…

Nights in the ryokan were peaceful. 

The chorus of toads and cicadas chirped and thrummed in perfect time throughout the surrounding black pine forest. Just beyond the veranda, other guests enjoying the hot springs chatted mildly, the rounded vowels and melodic structure of Japanese pleasant to listen to even if he couldn’t understand the language. Morty spent his evenings sitting by the shoji doors, staring at his phone and listening to the sounds of idle speech outside. 

He’d thought they’d only stay for a couple days at most, sure his grandfather’s restlessness would compel nonstop travel, but it had been over a month and Rick had shown no sign of discontent with staying put. He drank warm sake out of porcelain flasks, and he soaked in the private tub in the washroom, and he rested on the futon behind the fusuma panels whenever he pleased, never bothering to roll it up and put it back in its spot in the closet. 

Morty was pretty sure he hadn’t put on a pair of pants their entire stay. He made use of the yukata furnished by the staff and forewent all other clothing, sometimes not even bothering with the bathrobe and air drying in the nude after coming in from the springs. He smirked when his grandson averted his eyes, but otherwise didn’t comment, and Morty was learning to count his blessings, however dim they were.

The night following his latest chastening, however, marked a departure from their routine.

“Come here, baby.”

Morty froze. He looked up from the family group chat on his phone, where his mother and sister were exchanging increasingly pointed texts about ingratitude, abandonment issues and pleasing the unpleasable, curling up tighter in the alcove and hoping he’d misheard. 

“Don’t make me come over there and get you, Morty.”

He hadn’t. 

Lingering as long as possible on his pillow, Morty faltered to his feet. Rick made him aware of his every move in a way wholly nerve wracking, like he was performing before a panel of judges, awaiting a score in a competition he hadn’t signed up for. He stepped across the cushioned soft rush, soundless as the birds in flight painted in pale watercolors across the fusuma panels. Behind them, Rick stood beside the futon, tying the koshihimo of a formal, royal blue yukata at his waist. He gestured to the bed on the floor, and said, “Get dressed. We’re going out.”

Morty looked at the silken kimono laid out on the futon, and frowned. “But those a-are for girls.”

“Boys wear them here, too, Morty.”

Morty cast the spikes of bright yellow hyacinths adorning the long sleeves a doubtful look, but picked up the garment anyway. He knew it’d be soft from the way the overhead light glistened over its surface, but he still gasped at the sensation of silk between his fingers. Rick shot him a smirk, and he ducked his head.

“Where are we going, grandpa?”

Rick slipped on a pair of zori, and said, “There’s a festival going on in town. I thought you might like to see some fireworks, sweetie.”

Morty held the kimono to his chest, tilting his head. He hadn’t said anything, but he'd been disappointed about missing out on Independence Day celebrations on the fourth. His father had sent him pictures of the fireworks display they’d gone to without him, and he’d stared at the photos until they blurred into streaks of unintelligible color against the black backdrop of the Washington night sky.

“I -” he swallowed, and looked at his feet, and said, “I w-would like that, Rick. Thank you.”

Rick ruffled his hair, and it felt no different than it had when they first met. His hand was every bit as heavy as it had ever been; just as powerful, just as possessive, just as purposeful. Morty blinked back a rush of tears, and Rick brushed away the ones he couldn't stop from falling.

In all these months, all that had changed was Morty's understanding of what his touch meant.

“C’mon, baby,” he said, tender in a way a man so cruel had no right to be. He tipped his grandson's chin up, and leaned down to kiss him on the lips, before saying, “If you don’t hurry up and get ready, I’ll just assume you wanna come to bed early with me tonight instead, Morty. You’ve got two minutes to decide.”

It took some fumbling, but Morty got dressed in under two minutes.

…

The Toyohira River issued from Mount Oizaridake, flowing into Lake Jōzan and supplying water to the city of Sapporo. The display took place along its banks, thousands of fireworks blossoming across the sky after sunset, fantastically reflected in the sparkling water of the river. By the time they arrived through a portal, people were already densely packed for miles up and down the shoreline, eagerly awaiting the beginning of the show. Morty blinked in the low light, looking for a good viewing spot. He frowned when he saw they were all taken.

“Wh-where will we sit?”

Rick tipped his portal gun at him, and said with a smile, “I've got it covered, sweetie. Don't worry.”

Morty rubbed the back of his neck, feeling silly for asking. Of course the competition for a good seat was beneath his grandfather. He looked behind them, and saw a street lined with hanging baskets of firelight, casting a warm, orange glow over food and game stalls. The smell of grilled seafood and roasted chestnuts floated on the air, and the distant sound of live music filled in the gaps between lighthearted chatter and the gentle rush of the river.

“When do the fireworks start, grandpa?”

“Not for another half hour. What d’you say we go get something to eat while we wait?”

Suddenly, the mingling scents of cake, crepes and croquettes were much less inviting. Morty opened his mouth, but Rick cut him off, his smile vanishing. “Go ahead and tell me you’re not hungry, Morty.” 

Morty flinched and fiddled with the pockets formed by the free fabric of his oversized sleeves. He looked at the dirt and said nothing, and Rick set a hand on his shoulder, tone softening as he asked, “You took the medicine I gave you, right?”

Morty nodded. It was such a bitter thin film he’d been confused as to how it was supposed to help anyone feel less nauseous, but he’d swallowed it without question.

“Then you’ll be fine, baby. Now come on.”

Walking in zori took a little more effort than cross trainers, but once his ankles learned to compensate for the missing arch support, they were comfortable enough. Rick kept a hand on his shoulder as he led him to a stall selling little bamboo boats filled with round balls of dough doused in some sticky sauce. It smelled like barbecue mixed with breakfast cereal, and Morty pulled a face, turning his head away. Rick chuckled at him, pulling him closer to his side to take their spot in line. 

“You’ll like it, Morty. I promise.” 

Morty thought of all the other promises Rick had made him, and stared at their split toe socks; tabi, Rick had called them. Rick seemed to know a lot about the culture here, and not for the first time, Morty wondered about his grandfather’s life before he’d come into his own.

 _‘Back into my life,’_ he corrected himself. Rick had come back to him, like he was a long term investment that had reached its date of maturity, and it had finally come time to collect. Morty almost laughed at the comparison, but he didn’t want to have to explain his budding sense of black humor to his grandfather. 

He didn’t want to explain anything to him, really. 

Rick got two orders of the strange smelling fried dough, handing one of the boats to his grandson to dig in his sleeve for a few banknotes. Morty gaped as he received his change with a quick bow of his head and a polite thank you, and Rick had to push him by the small of his back to get him walking again.

“What, Morty?” he said, crow’s feet crinkling in amusement. “Surprised your old man’s got some manners?”

Morty shuddered at his grandfather’s nickname for himself. He’d made it clear how much it grossed him out, but judging from the way his grandfather laughed at his discomfort, that was the entire point. 

_“- just - oh, sweetheart, just come lay down. We’ll just - you can keep your clothes on this time, okay? Just - hey, hey, just come over here and give your old man a little bit of affection, now. Is that really - it’s not - that’s not so much to ask, is it? C’mere, baby, you know I’m not gonna hurt -”_

Rick ushered him to a seat at a teak table in front of a tempura restaurant, and Morty set the dish of unidentified food down. “I’ve never heard you say thank you before, Rick.”

Rick sat beside him, picked up the provided skewer and pierced one of the balls. He blew at the steam and popped it in his mouth, considering this as he chewed. Morty watched as he cast back over the past half a year, trying to dredge up a single instance of clearly expressed gratitude. 

Morty was sure there wasn't one.

Rick swallowed and rested his elbow on the table, propping his cheek in his hand. Morty couldn't decipher his expression, a cross between bemusement and indulgence as he said, “I guess you’re right, Morty.”

He leaned down, drawing his mouth close to whisper in his grandson’s ear, “I can think of a few things y-you could do to get me to say thank you, baby.”

Morty cowered to the table. The odors of wheat flour and green onion and some savory seafood he couldn’t place assaulted his senses, and he covered his mouth as his stomach rolled and his mouth watered. Rick straightened his back with a sigh, and said with all hint of flirtation gone from his voice, “Spit up all the saliva in your mouth, Morty. Don’t swallow it.”

Morty shot him a confused look, but he just grabbed the back of his neck and directed his head over the side of the chair. “If you swallow, you’re gonna puke again. Now spit.”

Morty did as told, spitting out the thin, salty water pooling in his mouth. Of course, Rick was right, and his bout of nausea began to fade. He could feel eyes on him, locals glaring at his rude display in disgust, and he shrank against his grandfather’s side. Rick rubbed his back, and said something to their audience in Japanese; judging from his tone and the way everyone looked away and resumed chatting, it was apologetic but stern.

Morty would never get used to hearing his grandfather speak in a language other than English. The first time he’d slipped into Japanese to book their room at the ryokan, Morty had stared up at him in absolute puzzlement, and asked, “You can speak another language?”

Rick had just given him a nonchalant look, like it was nothing to be proud of or surprised about, and said, “I speak a lot of languages, Morty. English isn’t even my first.”

Morty hadn’t asked what his grandfather’s mother tongue was, but guessing by the lullaby his mother sang to soothe herself in private, he had a good idea.

Presently, Rick had him tucked under his arm, telling him in a low, steady voice, “Just breathe - breathe through your nose, baby. It’ll pass in a minute. Just let the medicine do its work, alright? It’s gonna be okay, it’s gonna - it’ll be okay, Morty.”

Rick said that a lot. Morty knew anything that bore that much repetition was about as genuine as a politician’s campaign promises, but that didn’t stop the lie from calming his upset stomach. Once the urge to vomit passed, he turned into his grandfather’s chest, and asked sullenly, “Why do you have to talk like that, grandpa?”

“Like what, sweetie?”

Morty didn’t have to see the perverted yellow twist that passed for Rick’s grin to know it was there. He didn’t answer, and he didn’t pull away from his grandfather’s side, and when Rick skewered another ball of dough and held it to his lips, he only hesitated for a moment before he opened his mouth.

Straitjackets and steel gags and nasal tubes flashed in his mind’s eye, and Rick’s soft sound of approval as he allowed himself to be fed was almost enough to make him start to gag all over again. He focused on the taste and texture of the food, on chewing slowly and working up the wherewithal to get it all down. Rick patiently encouraged him, keeping his tone even and estival as he said, “That’s it, baby. See? It’s not so bad, is it? I-I told you - I - I knew you’d like it.”

Morty held back a quiet sob, and Rick held him closer, waiting for him to swallow. When he finally did, closing his eyes and shuddering violently as the mouthful of food slid down his throat, Rick praised him without mockery or reserve, breathing out, “Such a good boy, Morty. I know - I know that was hard, but it’s not always gonna be so tough. I promise, baby. It’s gonna get easier. It’s gonna - just give it some time, and it’ll get easier, sweetie. I swear it will.”

More repetition, except this time, Morty wasn’t afraid his grandfather was lying.

He was afraid he was telling the truth.

Morty clutched at Rick’s sleeves, and saving his tears for later, asked, “Wh-what was in that?”

Rick smothered a laugh into his hair, and said, “Octopus.”

Morty went green, and he laughed harder. 

After Rick got him what at first looked like an entire fish but turned out to be a cake pressed in the shape of a sea bream, he steered them down an alleyway and shot a portal into the side of the bustling patisserie where they'd bought it. Morty let his grandfather corral him through, focused on passing the piping hot cake in its paper bakery bag from hand to hand to avoid burning himself. It wasn’t until Rick took the cake from him and told him to look up that he finally saw where they were.

“Oh,” he said, just as stunned as he’d been on Procklim’s third moon, taking in the valley of changeable sunflowers. “Oh.”

They stood on a small lee on the face of the mountain, just above the treeline and inaccessible by foot. To their right was a long escarpment which trailed steeply upwards and terminated in a dramatic watershed, where the various rivers parted to follow their separate courses. Sparse, summergreen trees and shrubs clung to the mountainside immediately beneath them, their crooked, windswept limbs visible only by the light of dancing fireflies.

Rick circled an arm around his shoulders, and said, “Now, look down.”

The moment Morty did, the first fireworks whistled into the sky, and he stood in that breathless, transported state beyond the reach of grief. Under the cascade of comets and chrysanthemums and Catherine wheels, the people along the banks of the river released ethereal paper lanterns, some of which lazily sailed downstream to drift in aimless circles around Lake Jōzan, while others floated away on the air, ascending to take their place amongst the fireworks. 

Speechless, still, he stared. He drew a hand to his open lips, soaking in the scene with the entire summation of himself; the sound of delighted laughter and awestruck cheers; the scent of spent gunpowder and sweet cypress trees; the sight of the night sky coming alive with fountains of color, flowers of pure light, falling leaves of flame that faded between flickering candles, each and every one carried away in a little bamboo cage enclosed by bright red paper, each and every one symbolizing someone’s hope for a bright, prosperous future.

For a moment, Morty was grateful to be alive. 

“You like it, Morty?” Rick asked, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it anyway. When Morty stayed silent, not so much watching the fireworks go off as feeling them burst into bouquets and brocades of calcium chloride orange and strontium carbonate red before his eyes, Rick sat on the lee and pulled him down into his lap, and teased against his temple, “You do, don’t you? You’re a real sucker for pretty shit like this, huh?”

A gust of wind, chilled by the permafrost at the peak of the mountain, ripped up Morty's kimono, and he broke out in gooseflesh with a full body shiver. He drew closer to the warmth of his grandfather's body, and Rick chuckled, shifting to hold the taiyaki in front of him, wrapping him in his arms and blocking the wind with his legs as he said lower, “Tell me you like it, baby.”

Morty shuddered, though not from the snowbitten wind this time. He kept his eyes on the spinning serpents of white, gold and silver swirling through the sky, and swallowed hard to brace himself before he answered, “I - I do, grandpa. Thank you so much f-for taking me here.”

Rick smiled at him, a smile as impure as it was pleased, and he kissed along his hairline, saying in a voice so fond it was frightening, “Anything for you, sweetheart.” 

Morty bit his tongue to refrain from asking what his grandfather’s definition of anything was and why it precluded listening to him when he said no, and continued watching the display before them. Glittering rings and blinking dahlias, weeping willows and strobing peonies, all manner of pyrotechnics exploding in painstakingly exact time, altitude and sequence; the spectators below had to crane their necks or otherwise lay flat on their backs in order to see, but Rick had taken him so high up the mountain it was as if the show were taking place on a vast, dark stage just beneath them, and they were the only ones with access to balcony seating.

Morty thought of the view of the ocean from Anthony’s at Point Defiance, and his mother’s sad smile as she looked at the picture of his third birthday party, and the tourmaline he’d picked for his grandfather on their first adventure together, and his chest went so tight he started to breathe from the top of his lungs.

Rick looked at him curiously, and removing the fish-shaped cake from its wrapper, said, “What is it, Morty?” 

“I j-just -” Morty took in another shaky breath, trying to keep his tears at bay at least until they got back to the hotel, and asked, “- why does it have to be this way, Rick?”

Rick tilted his head down at him, absently flipping the fish from head to tail, tail to head in his hands. “What d’you mean, baby?”

Morty gestured to his grandfather’s legs on either side of him, a tired look on his face as he elaborated weakly, “Like _this_ , grandpa.”

“You’ve asked me this before, Morty. I told you why.” 

Rick’s voice was a cross between amused and austere, like he could laugh the question off just as easily as he could tell his grandson to shut the fuck up and enjoy the show. Morty carefully laid his hands on his grandfather’s wrists, and without looking away from the procession of palm trees lining a street composed of stars and Saturn shells, said, “All you told me was that you wanted me. You didn’t - y-you never explained why, Rick.” 

Rick hummed. He held the pastry to Morty's mouth, smiling when his grandson's hands stayed on his wrists, and asked, “Heads or tails?”

Morty frowned, staring down his nose at the fish. It smelled of vanilla sugar and sweet spice, with a mild, earthy undertone. He glanced up at his grandfather, searching for the answer in his eyes, but Rick just waited with a neutral, easy expression. Morty nervously licked his lips, and it got a little less easy, but still gave nothing away. 

“Uhm… t-tails?”

Rick tipped the cake to its tail end, presenting it for Morty to take a bite, and said with a light chuckle, “Thought so.”

“What's that supposed to- _oomph!_ ” Morty's question was cut off by a mouthful of crisp waffle and a deep red, sweet, smooth paste. Rick's chuckle spilled into outright laughter, and Morty flushed bright as the sparklers dotting the banks of the river. He chewed and swallowed quickly so he could snap out, “God, Rick, what is _wrong_ with you?”

“Didn't have any trouble eating that time, huh?” Rick asked, both admonishing and entertained, and Morty's stomach remembered to flip at his tone. He went silent, and Rick's amusement died down into something muted and meditative. He again held the pastry to his grandson's mouth, and said, “Finish this, and I'll tell you why it has to be this way, baby.”

Morty eyed it warily, and Rick shrugged, saying with callous equanimity, “Or just keep starving yourself until I lock you down in the lab, pry your mouth open with a ratchet gag and force you to eat through a plastic fucking tube. Your call, Morty.”

Morty paled, and immediately shrank back against his grandfather's chest, mumbling out, “I'll - I'll e-eat, grandpa.”

“Smart choice, sweetie.”

A heat burned the back of Morty's throat, a sob that wanted out, or perhaps a scream. He remembered months previously, when he’d allowed that heat to form the words, “ _I don't like you.”_

Now, he only allowed himself to be fed.

He tried to take the cake into his own hands, but Rick chutted at him and held it to his lips, far more interested in watching him eat than the spectacular barrage of rockets exploding into pinwheels of blue, purple and green across the sky. Morty blushed the same shade of red as the crushed adzuki beans filling the confection, but dutifully took bite after bite from his grandfather's hands. 

Rick enjoyed it entirely too much. Rick enjoyed _him_ entirely too much, and if Morty were completely honest, that was why he didn't want to eat. It wasn’t just that he was sick; he was sick with _spite_ , and his aversion to food stemmed from a desire for there to be less of him for his grandfather to enjoy. Less to touch, less to see, less to _consume_.

“Such a good boy,” Rick whispered as he finished the last of the fish, crumbs on his fingers and on the fine silk of Morty's kimono. “Such a good little boy for grandpa.”

As Morty swallowed the last bite, a hint of salt from his grandfather's fingertips touching his tongue, he thought of fading away as the fireworks did, leaving nothing but an echo of light in the dark. He thought of disappearing in a trail of smoke and a round of applause. He thought of people saying, _‘What a fantastic show,’_ and returning home, pleased with an evening of splendid entertainment. Rick traced his grandson's lips with his thumb, eyes half lidded, mouth a soft line, and asked, “What did your mother tell you about your third birthday, Morty?”

“Just that -” Morty’s lips moved over Rick's fingers, and his throat tightened when his grandfather's gaze took on a quality of hunger that had nothing to do with food, “- th-that I didn’t take m-much of a shine to you.”

Rick laughed, a deep, unsavory sound, and said, “Is that how she put it?”

Morty remembered his mother’s glassy eyes, her joyless smile, and nodded in silence. Rick's laughter tapered into a light chuckle, trailing off into a sigh barely audible over another hard gust of wind. He pulled Morty tighter to his chest, rested his chin atop the crown of his grandson's head, and said, “You couldn't stand the fucking sight of me, Morty. You screamed like a goddamn banshee whenever I got within ten feet of you. Shit, y-you hid under the dinner table like I was gonna catch you up on your vaccinations, baby.”

Morty imagined it; a little boy in a party hat, light-up Velcro shoes and spaceship overalls stained with buttercream frosting cowering under a table, sobbing for his mother, his father, even his big sister to save him from the strange man in their home. He didn’t know if he wanted to laugh or cry at the image, caught somewhere between domestic horror and black comedy. Instead, he drew his knees to his chin, and he forced himself to keep breathing, and he watched the sky go still in preparation for the grand finale.

“‘Didn’t take a shine to me?’” Rick asked, amused but subdued. He laid his hands over his grandson’s, flipping them to run his calloused thumbs over the smooth palms, and said quietly, “You knew I was bad news the moment I stepped through the front door, and all you wanted was nothing to do with me.” 

A loud report cracked through the air, signaling the beginning of the end, and Morty jumped, eyes straining open wide. Rick chuckled again, but this time, it reminded Morty of his mother’s laughter in that last, illuminating hour of Father’s Day. 

“Just as - Jesus, just as fucking cute now as you were when I dragged you out from under that table and held you for that stupid picture your mom wanted so bad,” he said, affection indistinguishable from appetite, and Morty froze, recognizing the downshift in his tone. He swallowed with great effort, desperate for a sip of water, and he couldn’t move. He couldn’t get enough air. He couldn’t feel anything but the fatalistic drum of his own heart, the unforgiving wind nipping his nose a chilled red, the fey, familial warmth at his back, steeling him against the cold, stealing him away from the world.

“You struggled so hard, sweetie. I’m - god, I’m pretty sure the only words you knew back then were ‘no’ and ‘let me go,’” Rick said, tone faraway fond, and a sick, hot lump formed in the back of Morty's throat at the arousal darkening the edges of his voice. 

“Why -” he croaked out, unable to hear himself beneath the battery of tourbillons beating back the encroaching night in a beautiful, ephemeral blaze of explosive light, “- why didn’t you?”

“Why didn’t I let you go?” Rick hummed, tilting his head as he considered his answer. He rubbed thoughtful circles into his grandson’s palms, and soon said with a small shrug, “At first, it was - well, honestly, it was just to see how long you could keep fighting me, baby. It was pretty fucking cute watching you try to get away.”

Yet again, Morty was blindsided by how childishly cruel his grandfather could be, thrown all the way back to that midnight trip in March when Rick told him he enjoyed picking on him for no other reason than that he found it funny, and yet again, Morty could only think to say, albeit much quieter this time, “Th-that’s a really bad reason, Rick.”

Rick nodded, undefensive in that way that came with complete self-acceptance. “I’m a really bad man, Morty.”

Morty trembled, and Rick smiled at him, that same smile he wore when he’d asked, _“Why can’t it be both?”_ and no amount of explaining would ever make Morty understand him. There was no excuse that made it better. There was no justification that made it more bearable.

“And… and then what happened, grandpa?”

But he still wanted to _know_. God help him, he wanted to hear when this sickness had taken root inside his grandfather; what he told himself so he could sleep at night; how he justified his ruthless, selfish, wicked nature beyond the nihilistic insistence that nothing really mattered, so why shouldn’t he just do as he pleased?

Morty knew no reason could spare him his suffering, but he was still aching for one nonetheless.

Rick stared at the fireworks with him, though Morty could tell he wasn’t watching them, and said in a slow, pensive voice, “It took a little while, but eventually, you tired yourself out, and you gave up. You let me hold you, and when I sat down on the couch, you fell fast asleep.”

The grand finale was coming to a close. Several paper lanterns had caught an updraft and drifted so close they nearly grazed the outstretched limbs of the cypress trees just beneath them. Morty watched them float by, and guessed at what the golden symbols on them might mean as he waited for the show to end.

_Liberation. Longevity. Loyalty. Luck. Love._

“After all of it - all the kicking, all the screaming, all the crying, you just passed out, and when I tried to lay you down, you wouldn’t let go of _me_ , and that - right then, right there, that was when I decided…” Rick shifted his grip on his grandson, slipping an arm under his legs and turning him to sit side saddle on his lap, and finished in a voice fashioned of dark, distorted endearment, “‘... alright. I can stick around for this.’”

Morty’s face twisted up in confusion, and he said, “B-but - but you didn’t, Rick. You - mom said she didn’t see you again until you came back in January. You left again.”

Rick smiled, and raised a hand to cradle the back of his head, and Morty could tell from the look on his face he was done talking. As his grandfather kissed him, and the fireworks filled the sky with a manmade aurora bright enough to obscure the moon, Morty wondered if no answer at all would have been more kind.

It was so loud. The fireworks rent the air as Rick parted his lips, and Morty flinched at the swelling cacophony of sound. Rick hauled him in close, pulling a leg up to brace his back, flexing the forearm under his knees to fold him small and tight into his lap. He tilted their heads to better lock their mouths together, and Morty could taste the sake and takoyaki on his tongue as he sighed out his pleasure. 

All was smoke, and standing ovation, and empty bouquet shells scattered along the banks of the river. 

“Rick, please -” Morty gasped, but Rick only took the opportunity to lick deeper into his mouth, under his tongue, across his soft palate, over the second molars that had just started coming in the week before last. 

Morty held still, and pinched his eyes shut, and was careful not to bite. 

“That’s it, sweetie,” Rick breathed out into his open mouth, praise low and lavish as he said, “That’s so good, j-just relax and - just - just like we’ve been practicing, yeah? Just kiss me back, baby, just - follow my lead, okay? Haven’t I - haven’t we had a good night? Don’t you - you wanna keep it that way, don’t you? Be a good boy and give grandpa a kiss, now. C’mon, baby, y-you can do it, c’mon, c’mon, now.”

 _“- if I wanted a Dutch wife, I’d find a - some sad, worn out little whore on the Citadel, now kiss me back before I ge-_ eeugh _-get bored, Morty. Unless y-you want - unless you wanted me to stop waiting -”_

Morty sobbed, unable to save his tears any longer. He tried to mimic his grandfather’s mouth and tongue, but only ended up lapping at his lips like he licked at ice cream cones; it was tentative, timid, and clumsy, but it was enough for Rick. His grandfather moaned and melted against him, gripping him tighter, threading his fingers through his hair, whispering in the hot, heavy blend of their breath, “So good, baby, so - so fucking good for grandpa. That’s it, that’s it, just - fuck, _just like that_. There you go, keep - just keep kissing me back, don’t stop, sweetheart, don’t stop.” 

Morty’s skin crawled, bile clawing up his throat, but he obeyed. He licked shallow and shy at the tongue running insistently over his, stifling soft whimpers under his grandfather’s deep groans, and he thought of someplace far, far away. He thought of his dad reading him bedtime stories while his mother pulled double shifts into the early hours of the morning; he thought of his sister sneaking into his room at night when she’d had a nightmare and didn’t want to sleep alone; he thought of the day his parents brought a tiny, snow white puppy home and told him he’d proven he was ready for the responsibility of a pet.

He told himself he wasn’t dying, no matter how much it felt like he was. 

Rick crept his fingers under the collar of his kimono, and Morty could no longer pretend he was elsewhere. 

“R-Rick, wait, I -” he broke away, ducking his chin so his forehead rested on his grandfather’s shoulder, and said with frantic, muffled fear, “- I’m really thirsty, a-and I - couldn’t we walk around the festival a little - a bit more?”

Rick’s fingers slowed. He looked down at his grandson as if he were a quaint, pitiful creature struggling in a drift net. Morty clutched at his sleeves, and whispered, “Please, grandpa.”

“Promise you won’t make me carry you to bed tonight, and I’ll say yes, Morty.”

Morty flushed to the tips of his ears, but nodded. “I - I promise, Rick.”

“What do you promise?”

Morty shied down further into his grandfather’s chest. Rick’s demand for specificity, born of scientific training and a pathological understanding of language only as line, lure and creel, added a layer of shame so thick Morty was sure he’d suffocate under it. 

“I pr-promise I’ll come to bed with you tonight,” Morty said, and when Rick made no move to let him go, he made himself even smaller in his lap, and elaborated clearly, “and I won’t tr-try to get away, grandpa.”

Rick pet his hair, and stroked his back, and said, “Good boy.”

…

The streets had cleared somewhat, many retiring home after the final fireworks had faded from the sky, but the festival was still lively with min'yō, the percussive buzz of shamisen and taiko drums animating the air. They weren’t the only foreigners about, but Rick stood above everyone by at least a head, so the two of them drew plenty of curious looks Morty hid from by keeping close to his grandfather’s side.

He knew no one possibly could, but he couldn’t shake the irrational thought that someone would catch his eyes, and know what the man with an arm draped over his shoulders had just done to him on the mountainside. 

Rick bought him a Ramune soda from a konbini. Morty studied its cap in confusion, and Rick motioned for him to hand it over. Morty watched as he tore off the seal, released the provided plastic opener, and used it to slam the marble stopper down into the bottle's oddly shaped Codd-neck. After the fizz settled, he handed it back to his grandson, who shot it a quizzical look. 

“That seems a little excessive just to open a soda,” Morty said, rolling the marble around the grooves inside the bottleneck. 

Rick shrugged. “It's an old closing design. Used to be the best way to hold in carbonation.”

Morty sipped it, and was pleasantly surprised at the taste. It reminded him of a less sweet Green River soda from back home, and given his thirst, that was more than welcome. Rick smirked at him, and asked, “What do you say, baby?”

The back of Morty's neck went hot, and he ducked his head before saying, “Th-thank you, grandpa Rick.”

Rick ruffled his hair and told him he was welcome, and Morty held the soda to his chest with both hands, wondering at how the most mundane of exchanges could now feel so monumentally dirty.

They passed by a stall with a line of large, underlit aquariums teeming with goldfish, surrounded by small children with paper nets. Morty peered around his grandfather's side, and saw an older girl in a white fox mask transferring a bowl of the darting orange fish into a clear, water-filled bag with the help of the stall keeper. She bounced on the balls of her feet, and Morty assumed she’d done quite well at the game, judging by the number of fish she’d acquired. 

“What are they doing over there, Rick?”

Rick looked over, and said while lazily scratching at the stubble on his neck, “Kingyo-sukui. It’s a - it’s just a silly little game for kids, Morty.”

Morty slowed down, and when Rick glanced back at him, he asked quietly, “Can I play?”

An indulgent look entered his grandfather’s eyes, and he gave a slight roll of his shoulders with a noncommittal nod, as if it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. He walked them over to the stall, exchanged a few coins with the stall keeper for the paper net and small bowl the other children were using, and handed them to his grandson after taking the soda from him. Morty stepped over to the aquarium, slipping in between a couple kids less than half his age whose mothers were guiding their hands, and was relieved when his grandfather hung back to smoke a cigarette and watch from a short distance. 

He quickly discovered the net was extremely delicate, and tore easily when exposed to water. A goldfish ripped a hole through the paper the first time he tried to scoop one up, and he frowned. The net was still mostly intact, and he saw others playing with shredded paper, so he tried chasing after the fish again, but they kept finding their way through the hole in his net. 

“You have got to go more careful,” said a muffled voice beside him, and he looked up in surprise. It was the girl in the mask, peering at him through two thin, curved ellipses. She was taller than him by a couple inches, and Morty fumbled to straighten up, dropping his net in the process. He went to stick his hand in the water to grab it, but the girl stopped him with a hand on his arm, saying in a mildly alarmed voice, “Your lovely kimono!”

Morty tilted his head at her pronunciation of ‘lovely,’ but he could understand her just fine. He let her pull him back, and watched as she rolled up the unlined cotton sleeve of her pink yukata to reach down into the fishtank and pick up his net for him. It was still usable, and she ushered him back to show him how to successfully scoop the goldfish.

“You must be quick to catch them, but cautious of the poi. Watch.” 

She held the net still in the water, and when a fish swam over it, she swept it up in one steady motion, capturing a white faced anekin and gently depositing it into his bowl. She handed him back the net, and said with a smile so bright Morty could hear it through her mask, “Now you try again, but even if your poi does break, you at least have one to take home.” 

Under her supervision, Morty caught one more goldfish, a black finned demekin with bulging telescope eyes, and she patted him on the back, saying, “Great job!”

Morty flushed, staring at the two fish swimming in the bowl together. He didn’t want to look over his shoulder. He didn’t want to see his grandfather's expression.

He wanted to ask this girl her name.

“Th-thank you f-for your help, ah -” he let the word hang in the air, an invitation for her to introduce herself, but she only tilted her head. The sweeping red lines decorating her mask threw back the light of the aquarium, and Morty could just make out her dark brown eyes behind the painted wood. The silence drew out, so he tried instead, “I’m - I’m Morty.” 

“Oh, yes, I know,” she said in a sunny chirp, and Morty blinked, taken aback. She traded her bag of goldfish to her other hand, and said, “You are staying in my family’s ryokan. The boy with Mr. Sanchez, yes? I help to bring in your meals and take up your bedclothes.”

Morty’s eyes widened. He remembered glimpsing the girl in plain indigo jinbei bowing outside their door, silently setting their table and gathering their sheets and towels, and he realized in the weeks he'd been here, he’d never heard her voice before. He hadn’t so much as looked her in the eyes, spending most of his time curled up in the engawa, out of sight and anxiously dreading the fall of night. 

She already knew him.

She knew his grandfather.

His momentarily forgotten fear that anyone could look him in the eyes and know what Rick did to him - how his grandfather _touched_ _him_ \- slammed back into him with sickening force. He covered his mouth, struggling not to double over, and the girl stepped towards him, hand raised in concern. 

“Are you alright? Do you need -”

“It’s okay. I’ve got him.”

Rick looped a hand around his grandson’s arm and pulled him away from the other children and their parents. Morty didn’t dare to dig in his feet or complain, but his eyes flickered between the little plastic bowl of two fish, and the girl in the white mask with a worried hand in the air, still halfway to touching him to see if he needed help. 

If she didn’t know he did before, she did now. He could feel it, her eyes on him, the flash of understanding behind the narrow slits in her mask; his fear was unmistakable as he was dragged away, a certain, undeniable rush of silent distress that everyone missed except for the girl looking right at him, and Morty’s paranoia was struck through with a legitimacy that made him want to crawl inside of himself and never be seen again.

Some things were too delicate to withstand the damage of being seen. They could break down under the weight of nothing more than a curious glance; an investigative look; the passive destruction of the knowing stare.

Morty felt like that now; like a cave painting degraded by the heat and humidity of human breath, his pigments decaying with each and every passerby catching so much as a glimpse of him. He felt like an exhibit that needed to be closed off from the public for his own protection, his shame and humiliation works of art necessitating secrecy and darkness. 

He looked down, struggling to keep up with his grandfather’s strong gait. Where he’d heard some things were better left unsaid, he now knew there were also some things better left unseen, and his grandfather had transformed him into one of them. Every day, every night, sinking secrets into his skin, searing brands into his sides, sucking bruises into his neck - Rick called them love bites, but Morty knew what they really were.

A constant reminder of what was to come. 

Rick opened a portal blocked from view by a passing palanquin, and hauled him through without another word. 

…

Morty spat out the presage to vomit over the redwood rails of the engawa, breathing slowly through his nose to keep his food down as Rick collected a dose of antiemetic from the room. His grandfather stepped up behind him, held his head back to set the dissolving film on his tongue, and rubbed his back as he swallowed it down. 

He offered no verbal soothing, as Morty had grown accustomed to hearing, and alarm bells began to ring.

When the urge to purge his stomach dwindled and he stood up, Rick handed him his soda, its marble clattering loudly in the late-night stillness, and said, “Sip this, Morty.”

Morty took it with a quiet thanks, and wrapped one arm around himself as he drank, immensely relieved to wash down the bitterness of the medicine clinging to his tongue. The carbonation helped to fully resettle his stomach, and he stared at the moon as he waited for his trembling to subside.

It seemed brighter here. Nearer, almost, though Morty was sure that had more to do with the near perpetual cloud cover in his home state than anything. A summer storm brewed on the horizon, slate gray pillars of fog glowering behind the distant snowcapped mountain. Mimulus flowers the same shade of yellow as his kimono clung to the edges of the stream which trickled down into the main onsen, a large open air bath opaque with sulfur and shimmering with volcanic heat. 

He remembered the pictures he’d sent to his father to ensure he was fine, and suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to call his dad. He wanted to hear his voice, and ask him how he and Snuffles were doing, and promise him he would be home before too long. It would be early morning in Washington, the sun lightening the sky to a hazy, brumous blue on the other side of the world, and Morty missed him so much it was all he could do to cling to the railing and keep himself from breaking down into gut wrenching sobs. 

“Oh, baby,” Rick finally sighed, drawing him back against his chest. “What is it now?”

“I want -” and as soon as Morty opened his mouth to speak, his tears choked him, streaking down his blotchy, red-hot cheeks, “- I _wuh_ -wanna talk to - to m-my dad, Rick.”

Rick’s arms stiffened, and Morty’s breath hitched as he said, “It’s too early over there. He won’t be awake.”

“He’ll - but he’ll wake up if I call, Rick, h-he won’t mind -”

“Morty,” his grandfather cut him off, and the ice in his tone convinced Morty to stop pushing the matter. He inhaled sharply, trying to get himself under control but only adding more fuel to the fire of his breakdown, and he sobbed so hard it felt as if he’d torn his throat. Rick quickly carted him inside, slid the door closed with a foot behind them, and sighed again, equal parts annoyed and long-suffering.

“You know you can’t talk to him when you’re like this, sweetie. You’ll just upset him,” Rick said, remorselessly sensible as he set his grandson down on the futon. Morty swiped at his tears with the heels of his palms, and Rick gave him an inscrutable look, eyes glinting like chips of granite before he conceded quietly, “I’ll let you call him in the morning if you’re a good boy tonight.”

Morty chewed on his inner lip, wrung his hands up in his obi, and said, “I’ll be good, grandpa.” 

“Well, you’re not - you’re really not off to a great start,” Rick said, shaking his head in disappointment. Morty’s eyes went wide, his heart leaping into his mouth, and he stared up at his grandfather in confusion, who heaved a put upon sigh before saying, “You already made me carry you to bed, baby.”

Morty’s lips parted, remembering the promise Rick had demanded of him earlier, and started to stumble out, “But - but I - but you - I would’ve come on my own if y-you hadn’t -” 

“Shh, shh, goddamn, baby, I’m just - I’m teasing, Morty, fuck,” Rick said, laughter softened with a lulling lilt. He shooed his grandson's hands away from his obi and reached behind him to undo the butterfly knot at his back. Morty went rigid, resisting the urge to turn his head, to curl up his knees, to recoil from his grandfather's nearness. 

He thought of his dad asking him, “ _How’re you doing today, son?”_ and made no move to stay the hands removing his clothes.

“How many days now, sweetheart?” Rick asked, and Morty shivered as the sash was pulled away and the sleeves slid down his shoulders, revealing the white cotton under robe beneath. Morty's world shrunk down to the wide sweep of his grandfather’s shoulders, the long arch of his neck, the throaty rasp of his chuckle as he said, “C'mon, sweetheart. I know you've been counting.”

Morty swallowed hard, and answered, “S-sixty-nine, grandpa.”

Rick snickered, a warm, ugly sound, and pushed him to lay back on the futon before spreading out the panels of the kimono to either side of him and saying, “Now you're definitely not ready for that, baby.”

Well, he wasn't ready for any of this, but Rick’s remark confused him. Squirming at the silk shifting over the parts of his body exposed beneath the under robe, he asked, “Wh-what do you mean, Rick?”

Rick laughed harder. “Look, I'll buy you knowing fuckall about drugs, but you're a teenage boy with access to the internet, Morty. There's no way you don't know what sixty-nining is already.”

Morty stared up at him blankly, and Rick blinked, laughter edged out by mild shock. 

“Jesus Christ, Morty. You really don’t, do you?”

Morty flushed at his grandfather’s tone, a sort of heated, pleased surprise, a flash of understanding entering his eyes reminiscent of the moment he’d discovered his grandson was ticklish. Rick knelt back and swept a hand through his hair, his breathing noticeably picking up as he felt around beside the futon for his phone. He turned it on, and asked, “What do you know about, baby?”

Morty turned his legs inward, shuffling his feet nervously. He didn't like where this was going, but then again, with Rick, he never did. 

“Not a whole lot be-besides the, uhm… the things you said y-you were going to do -” Morty ran his hand over the inside of the sleeve folded in on itself under his hand, and whispered, “- to me.”

Rick smirked, the thin line of his lips curling back into something lustful and lupine, and he asked, “And what did I say I was going to do to you, sweetie?”

Morty diminished against the futon, all of Rick's dirty asides and outright statements of unwavering intent swirling in his mind. He crossed his arms over his stomach, staring out into a stretch of space somewhere between now and the day he met his grandfather, and he whispered out into it, “You said you weren't going to leave me alone, grandpa.”

Rick’s brow raised, thoughtfulness rounding out the lechery lining his features. Morty watched his grandfather remember the night he'd told him everyone had left him alone, and promised he wasn't going to, and asked for a second chance. His mouth softened, and he leaned down to kiss him on the temple, more like a grandparent bidding a child goodnight than a man biding his time until he could deflower his grandson, and he said, “Good answer.”

Lowering himself down next to his grandson, he typed something into the search bar of his phone, and continued with an air good sport and all candor, “But I also said I was gonna slide my cock into your tight little ass, didn't I, baby?”

Morty blanched, and Rick flashed cracked, rotten teeth at him, lewd grin somehow made all the worse by the fondness lightening his eyes as he said, “You know that’s just the showstopper, though, don’t you, Morty?”

Rick slipped a hand under his grandson’s robe, snakeskin touch slithering over bare, warm skin, and he went on base on bass, “I’m gonna suck you off, and I’m gonna eat you out, and I’m gonna stretch you open on my fingers, Morty. I haven’t waited ten fucking years just to skip the foreplay, sweetheart.”

Rick rolled his eyes at whatever was on his phone, and holding it within his grandson’s line of sight, said, “Not like this asshole, jeez.”

It took a moment for the video on the screen to make sense. A boy with dark red, sweat soaked hair bent over a table, a steel bar covered in black polyurethane fixed between his teeth, groaning and sobbing in pain as a man, face out of frame, pinned him down by his shoulders and rammed a hard cock up his ass. Morty flinched and looked away, and unlike earlier with the images of force feeding, Rick let him with a light chuckle.

“Don’t worry, sweetie. I ain’t gonna do you like that,” Rick said in his ear, pulling his under robe open to expose his chest down to his navel. “I can be a pretty selfish piece of shit, but I’m not that fucking inconsiderate. I promise.”

Morty remembered his grandfather’s version of consideration, and smothered a whimper in the back of his throat. The boy in the video echoed him, strangled whining cutting through the room until Rick clicked off the page to search for something else.

“Here we go, Morty. This is sixty-nining.”

Rustling and moaning issued from the phone, followed by a muffled order to shift the angle of the camera and turn up the radio. The song was familiar in a recent way, a tune Morty had heard now and again over the summer trailing down from speaker systems in shopping centers and rolling out of cars stopped at red lights. It was memorable for its use of bells and clean, clear intro which built into a chaotic, overlapping chant by the third verse. Morty had found its melody pleasant enough to nod along to, but had never paid attention to the lyrics. 

_“- may contain the urge to run away, but hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks. Citrezene, your fever’s gripped me again, never kisses, all you ever send are fullstops -”_

“C’mon and look, baby,” Rick said, tone gently coaxing as he framed the side of his grandson’s face. “I’m not gonna make you do it. I just want you to see for now, okay?”

His hand was much softer than it had been earlier in the evening, more inviting than demanding, but Morty knew it was a command all the same. He forced himself to look back at the phone, and finally understood the phrase ‘the beast with two backs.’ A man and boy lay together, faces obscured by one another’s thighs as they sucked each other's cocks, and Morty gasped, color returning to his cheeks. 

_“- to muscle and toe to toe, the fear has gripped me, but here I go. My heart sinks as I jump up, your hand grips hand as my eyes shut. Do you know where the wild things go? They go along to take your -”_

“R-Rick, I don’t - I really don’t wanna - please, pl-please turn it off,” Morty said, so quiet he might as well have said nothing, and Rick flipped the phone so the video filled the screen. He weaved an arm under his grandson’s upper back to prop him up, settled in more comfortably by his side, and let the pornography go on playing. 

Sweat beaded on Morty’s upper lip, his hands going clammy and cold. He watched the video without seeing, listening without hearing; again, the boy had dark red hair, the same color as his own, and Morty could now accurately make out how much smaller he was than his partner, half his size at most. He was filled with a sensation identical to the one he'd felt in that cold, foreign hotel at the tail end of April, knowing before understanding, confusion giving way to devastating comprehension.

He was looking at himself. 

It was worse than the vision in the lamp. The whisper and slap of skin on skin added a layer of realism the wax figurines had lacked, the full color granting an authenticity from which it was impossible to distance himself.

 _“- hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks. Germaline, disinfect the scene, my love, my love love love. But please don’t go, I love you so, my lovely -”_

“What d'you think, sweetie?” Rick asked, voice full of smoky amusement, and before Morty could think himself out of it, he snatched the phone from his grandfather's hand and threw it with furious force against one of the fusuma panels, ripping clean through the thick paper. The sharp _crack_ of the screen shattering rang out in the ensuing stillness between them, but the video and its background music didn't stop playing, echoing tinnily through the room.

_“- don’t go, I’ll eat you whole. I love you so, I love you so, I love you so. Please don’t go, I’ll eat you whole. I love you so, I love you so, I love you so, I love you -”_

Rick stared at the hole in the crane’s wings, amusement falling away into an abstruse expression Morty refused to see, opting instead to pinch his eyes shut and say in a voice as thin as it was infuriated, “I think you’re _disgusting_ , Rick.” 

The instant the words left his mouth, Morty felt them settle like a collar around his neck. There was no taking them back, no fixing the shift in the air, no erasing his fed up outburst.

There was no easy recovery from the truth.

A moment became a minute without response, the gasps and groans from the broken phone blending with the surrounding chorus of toads and cicadas professing summer, the distant rumble of thunder promising rain. Morty dared not open his eyes, as if only by looking his grandfather in the face would his words be made real. In the small eternity between his flash of defiance and his grandfather’s decision over how best to make him regret it, he thought of those two goldfish, swimming around in that little plastic bowl, and just like that, his anger abandoned him.

Born and bred for nothing more than a silly game for kids, set to frantically swim in a small tank, just to be caught up and dumped in an even smaller one.

What an awful fucking joke.

Despite his fear, and his misery, and his disgust, he started laughing. A soft, insuppressible giggle, unhinged with hysteria and jagged with fright; he tried to cover his mouth but it was no use. He laughed without humor, tears streaming fast from his eyes to his hairline, and it was like tickle torture without the tactile stimuli.

“Oh, baby,” Rick said, as calm as his grandson was distraught. “Oh, my sweet baby. It’s okay, it's okay. You're okay. It's okay, baby.”

Morty laughed harder, cried harder, frayed and afraid, and said, “N-no, it's _not_ , Rick. It's _not_ a-a-and you _know_ it's not.”

Rick rounded him up against his chest, removing his grandson’s robes from the waist up to rub at the bare skin of his back as he said soothingly, “But it can be, sweetie. If you just let it - if you just let me show you - when you stop fighting me so fucking much and just relax a little, it'll be so good, sweetheart, I promise, I promise.”

“I don’t - god, Rick, that's not the - you know that's n-not the problem!” Morty snapped, his laughter waning but the effect of his anger still lost behind his stricken, watery voice. “I don’t w-want it to be _good_. I don’t want it at _all_. I don’t want you _touching_ me. I don’t - I just don’t - Jesus, Rick, _I_ _don’t fucking_ _want_ _you_.”

Morty felt his grandfather stiffen beneath him, and knew he’d finally pushed him past indulgence. No sooner than he’d opened his mouth to apologize, Rick was shoving him onto his back, stripping him nude without further finesse or preamble, tone pulling a one-eighty into a brutal snarl as he said, “Do I look like I _fucking care_ what you _want_ , Morty?” 

Morty shut his mouth so hard his teeth clacked together, and shook his head no. Rick grabbed him by his shoulders, and in a voice he was clearly straining to keep level, said, “Look at me, Morty.”

As much as he didn’t want to, Morty forced himself to open his eyes. Rick looked almost as angry as he had when Jerry brought up Easter, though there was a different shade of outrage to it; more ire than wrath, more frustration than resentment. Morty was always all too aware of their difference in size, but never had it been more plain what his grandfather’s stature meant than in this moment.

This had never been, and would never be, a matter of physical resistance.

“Now, maybe I haven’t been clear enough on this, sweetie. Maybe I really have spared the rod with you too many times, and y-you’ve gotten - you’ve gone and got the wrong idea about your old man,” Rick said, working the words out through gritted teeth in a way that was somehow far worse than shouting would have been. “You don’t want me? You don’t want me touching you, Morty?” 

Rick leaned down, breath sour and scorching over Morty’s face as he ground out, “You think I don’t fucking know that already?”

Morty went perfectly still. A stony, smoldering pit formed in his stomach, his veins seizing up on the blood struggling to flow through them. The rapacity in his grandfather’s eyes, unvarnished by sympathy or forbearance, was beyond his understanding. No hunger matched its savagery, no thirst contested its desire. 

Nothing compared to the self-serving want, the pure, vicious greed compelling him to ruin, to possess, and to consume. 

_“- I’ve waited so fucking long for you, sweetheart -”_

Now, staring up into his grandfather’s sunken, starving, bloodshot eyes, Morty knew exactly how difficult that had been for him. 

He tried to say he was sorry, but the words got stuck in his throat when Rick grabbed hold of his thighs and wrested them open, spitting on his fingers before he slipped them between the cleft of his grandson’s ass. Morty jumped and began to shriek, but Rick clamped a hand over his mouth, face flat and resolute as he slicked the spit over his grandson’s hole, calluses catching on the delicate, untouched skin and making Morty sob anew with a fresh wave of terror.

“You don’t want it to be good, Morty?” he asked, nasty and annoyed, pushing his middle finger inside of him with unmistakable meanness. “Would you rather me give you something to really fucking cry about? Because it’s - it’s a lot easier to make you hate it th-than to make you want it, Morty, believe me.”

Morty screamed through Rick’s fingers, not in pain so much as white hot, blinding panic. The strange stretching sensation was secondary to the malice in his grandfather’s expression, the blood-chilling lack of tenderness in his hands as he opened him up and said, “You difficult, ungrateful, _stupid little boy_. Do you have any goddamn clue how much worse it gets than me? How much bullshit I put up with because I actually fucking _care_ about you?”

If this was what caring felt like, Morty never wanted to know what it looked like when his grandfather stopped giving a fuck. 

He gasped for air, yanking at Rick’s wrist, squirming away from the hand between his legs, but it was no use. Rick went to press another finger in alongside the first, but the spit had gone tacky so he pulled his hand back to lave his tongue over his fingers, soaking them with enough saliva to drip down the palm of his hand before he tried again. His two middle fingers glided in with ease, odd and uncomfortable but not painful as Morty had imagined it would be. What hurt was Rick’s heavy hand covering his mouth; the way the fabric of his kimono awkwardly bunched up under his back; the sheer displeasure with which his grandfather spat out his agitated rhetoric and cruel insults.

“Such a spoiled fucking _brat_ ,” he said, thrusting his fingers deeper inside his grandson’s ass, driving at something with a purposeful force that matched the rhythm and cadence of his deep, gritty voice. “I’m getting so fucking _tired_ of this shit. When will you just let it sink in? Why won’t you just -” a sharp swivel of his fingers, “- fucking -” a firm, full press upwards, “- _accept_ _it already_.”

Morty’s eyes went wide, back bowing violently against the futon as the breath was ripped from his lungs in a shrill, startled moan. Rick’s aggravated sneer gave way to a self-satisfied smirk, and he said, a measure of welcome warmth returning to his tone, “There it is.”

Whatever Rick had just brushed inside of him, it was the furthest thing from painful, and paradoxically, that made it so, so much worse. 

He stopped trying to snatch his grandfather’s hand away from his mouth and started smacking at it instead, desperately trying to get him to see that he needed more air than he was allowed through his smothering fingers. When he gave up trying to wriggle away and spread his legs to brace his uncontrollably arching back, Rick let go of his mouth and pressed down on his stomach to force him flat against the futon.

“That feel good, baby?” he asked, vexation waning as his grandson panted, and keened, and wailed under his hands. Morty wrenched his fingers up in the panels of silk beside him, that awful, simmering, sweetheart heat cranking up beneath his core. It was going to happen again. God, it was going to happen _again_ , and there was no amount of begging he could do to kill the fire his grandfather was stoking to life between his legs.

There was nothing he could do to keep his body from betraying him. 

“That’s it, sweetie, that’s - fuck, that’s it. Just relax and - there we go, open up for grandpa, o-open up for me, baby. Lemme see it, lemme see how fucking good I make you feel, c’mon, c’mon now.”

Once Rick inveigled him into a supine hook position, he circled a damp, warm hand around his soft, twitching cock, and began to coax him to hardness as he fucked him on his fingers. Over Morty’s groans, his high, horrified sobs, he heard himself across the room, speaking in a tremulous, pathetic little whine he knew all too well. 

_“Gr-grandaddy, a-a-are you close? Please, it’s really starting - I-I mean, I’m getting tired, Rick. Couldn’t you just fuck me -”_

Morty covered his ears. His heartbeat pounded in his head, terror and arousal commingling into a confused rush of blood to his muscles in preparation for flight, to his cock in preparation for orgasm. He could still hear his grandfather, could smell his rotten breath, could feel his skilled hands working on him and at him and inside him. 

He was too overwhelmed to even try to say stop. A flush bloomed down his thighs, across his stomach, around his neck and behind his ears. His nipples peaked despite remaining untouched, his chest heaving like a hare what’s caught wind of a wolf, and he didn’t have to see to know exactly how Rick was looking at him. 

“Jesus fuck, baby,” he said, anger fading away into a soft thrill, all rapt up in fondness and fixation. “Look at you. God, w-would you just - look at you.” 

Except Morty had looked at himself, and that was the problem. He had seen himself the way his grandfather saw him, and even if by some miracle he could get away, there was no escaping that. There was no unseeing himself as a vessel for intimacy; a treasure to take pleasure in; a thing to be owned.

That was what Rick was looking at. Not a boy, not a child, not even another human being. 

_“- your mom gave you to_ me _, M-Morty. Pretty sure that outranks any property rights you -”_

Nothing more than a possession. A belonging that could be kept and cherished or degraded and discarded on a whim. A living, breathing prize to be caught and claimed, no different from those shimmering, darting fish unable to see beyond the glass walls of their enclosure. 

When he came, crying out and clenching down on his grandfather’s fingers, he thought of him saying, _“I want to be gentle with you,”_ and another piece of him broke away, falling into the gleaming wreck of the person he could have been had he never met Rick Sanchez.

He wanted that, too. Stinging with the pain of stupid little boy and spoiled fucking brat, he was desperate for the balm of my sweet baby. In this moment, wracked with the fallout of another forced orgasm, he wanted nothing more than the gentleness his grandfather had poured into their first kiss. 

He just wanted Rick to be happy with him again.

Watching his grandfather lick his fingers clean, he shuddered in badly repressed disgust. He allowed his hands to be pulled from his ears and pinned beside his head, and he screwed his eyes shut when Rick spoke against his cheek, “Now, how about we - let’s try this one more time.”

His breath was heavy, his weight more pressing than it had ever been. The deep affection and dark threat in his voice filled Morty with both relief and terror as he asked again, “What d’you think, sweetie?”

Morty listened to an alternate version of himself plead with his grandfather, in another dimension on the other side of the room. He listened to him sob in exhaustion, and beg his grandaddy to finish, and get told, _“If you don’t wanna get put back on the horse, you better shut the fuck up, champ.”_

He cringed at the vitriol in that familiar voice, at the ejaculate cooling below his navel, at his grandfather’s hands tightening on his wrists. He closed his eyes harder, and he swallowed down his tears, and he said in a hopeless, halting voice, “I… I th-think I… I w-w-want to kiss, grandpa.”

Again, Rick stiffened. Morty counted his heartbeats, the firetail flit and flutter beating its wings in his chest, frantically preparing him for a flight that would never come. 

There was nowhere to go.

The seconds eked by, another midnight closing in all around him. No matter how badly he wished it, the days never stopped passing. One more down, one less his grandfather promised to wait. Sixty-nine going on sixty-eight, slipping by both so fast he could barely keep up the count, and so slow he could barely manage the dread. 

The storm clouds culminated in a great clash of thunder and rainfall, slamming against the roof with such intensity he opened his eyes in a startled gasp, and that was his mistake. 

“Oh.”

Rick’s eyes made a liar of him. His flushed cheeks told the truth. His slack lips said it all.

 _“- look like I_ fucking care _what you_ want _-”_

His grandfather let go of his wrists, and cupped his face, and said in a voice so kind it was difficult to believe how cruel it had been not one minute before, “Of course, baby.”

When Rick kissed him, mild as watercolor, soft as sable brush, Morty was consumed with a sense of disintegration, a loss of conviction, a coming to pieces from which there was no coming back. He was uncertain how he felt about divine order or moral absolutism, but in this moment, overcome with comfort at his grandfather’s forgiving hands and obliging mouth, he was sure he’d invited a sin into his heart. 

He’d asked for it, and there was no blaming Rick for that.

As he lay beneath his grandfather, meeting his kisses gun shy and trembling, performing appropriately gratifying gasps and sweet sighs, he imagined a little toy spaceship, shrinking away in a fire. He saw it crinkle in on itself and melt down onto the coals, black smoke gushing from its dissolving hull. He heard it squeal as it lost its structure, hissing thick plumes of poison into the air as it dripped into an unrecognizable pool of wasted plastic. 

He stayed quiet as Rick grew more insistent, forcing him to tilt his head to slot their mouths together tight, racing hands down his sides to hold his hips hard, rocking slow and firm against his body. His intent was unquestionable, so Morty dared not ask what he was doing. He heard the slip and rustle of fabric, and sobbed into his grandfather’s mouth when he felt bare skin against his own.

“Shh, shhh, sweetie. Stay calm, just - shhh, now, grandpa’s not gonna hurt you. I’m still waiting, baby. I promise - _fuck_ , I promise I’m still waiting.”

Morty clutched at Rick’s shoulders as his legs were folded up and to the side, twisting at the hip to lay at a lateral right angle while his back stayed flat against the futon. Rick swiped the side of a hand over the clear come coating his grandson’s lower belly, and said in a voice that might have been soothing if it weren’t for its sharp, excited corners, “Just be still, sweetheart, and I’ll - I’m just gonna - oh, don’t cry, baby, don’t cry. It won’t hurt at all, o-okay? I’m not gonna - I won’t put it inside, Morty, not yet. I promise, baby, not yet, not yet.”

Rick braced a hand on Morty’s knee and smeared the come between his grandson’s upper thighs, just below the slight swell of his backside. Morty tensed when the head of Rick’s cock pressed against the joining of his thighs, and it was all he could do to cling to his grandfather’s hoarse promises and hope he was telling the truth.

As Rick’s cock slipped between his slender thighs, leaving nothing of its size to the imagination, Morty began to weep in earnest. Weak, subdued, exhausted, he wrapped his arms around his grandfather’s neck, and begged through his tears, “Pl-please don’t, grandpa, please don’t. I’m not r-ready, I’m _nuh_ -not ready, I’m not, I’m not. Please d-don’t, Rick, please, please.”

“Shh, baby, shhh. Hush now, it’s okay. I’m not gonna do anything, alright? I swear, sweetie, I’m just gonna - I’m just - fuck, _fuck_ , that’s good, th-that’s it. Hold your legs just like that, Morty, there’s a good boy,” Rick panted against his lips, thrusting between the seam of his closed legs with an urgency that reminded Morty of the second time he’d kissed him. It was the exact same shade of hot, and desperate, and ruthless; a total eclipse of his body, an envelopment of his rejection, an eradication of his autonomy. 

Morty tasted blood in his mouth. Warm, salted copper blossoming over his tongue, seeping to the back of his throat to slide down into his stomach. He remembered the week of cold shoulders and dispassionate stares after he refused his grandfather’s kiss. He remembered his fear; the long, anxious nights spent wondering how Rick would punish him, curled up in a ball under his covers catching sleep only in snatches, jolted awake by every creaking floorboard or slamming cabinet. 

Worse than that, though, he remembered the loneliness. The confused sting of each dismissal, the nagging worry at every unsmiling look; the awful, aching, empty thought eating away at him, _‘What if he won’t forgive me?’_

He shoved the question away, burying it with the sunflowers and the fireworks, the long afternoons playing checkers and the pleasant pain of, _“I’d miss you so fucking much if I left.”_

He held on tighter. He pressed his lips against his grandfather’s, a damp, whimpering brine, and Rick sighed out his approval. He pressed down harder on Morty’s knee, rolling his hips full bowed and legato, pearls of precum leaking from the tip of his cock to further ease the glide between his grandson’s whisper thin thighs. 

“My baby,” he said, warm as a prayer answered, winding an arm under Morty’s back to hold him close as heat to fire, “My sweet baby. That’s it, th-there you are- there’s my sweet baby. My - that’s it, just like that, j-just like that, such a good boy for grandpa - you - you’re grandpa’s little sweetheart, aren’t you, Morty?”

Morty gasped, fingers curling into the royal blue fabric covering his grandfather’s back, and Rick chuckled between their lips. As if timing it, he angled his thrusts higher at the exact same instant another fantastic clap of thunder resounded through the room, and Morty writhed with a full body shiver as their cocks slid together. 

“O-oh, _oh_ , my god - R-Rick, _wait_ \- wh-what -”

“You ready to tell me that turns you on, yet?” he asked, laughter so rough and dark and deep Morty couldn’t discern it from a fresh peal of thunder. Rick pitched his voice even lower, and as he deliberately ran his cock against his grandson’s limp, oversensitized one, he said in his ear, “My little sweetheart.” 

Morty whined, a strident, needy sound he didn’t recognize as his own, and Rick’s laugh took on a bright, smoky hue. “I saw it the second I said it, watching over you in that tub full of wisteria water. Y-you know that, don’t you, Morty?”

Rick laved his tongue up his grandson’s neck, behind his ear, and blew warm air over the wet stripe as he said, “I knew that shit would set you on fire, sweetheart.” 

Sure as the sky cried, the fire returned to Morty’s belly. He quivered, sobbing at the intensity of renewed arousal so soon after orgasm, but it only encouraged Rick to push harder, to rock faster, to keep talking from the bottom of his chest, “God, the way you _looked_ in that water, baby. Squirming and covering your little cock with your hands, so - so fucking shy about letting your old man see how much he turned you on, _shit_.”

Morty blushed red as shame, and denied nothing, and Rick groaned into the hollow of his throat. “Y-you like it, don’t you? You always have, I know it, I know you have, r-right from the fucking start. Don’t you - you like being my baby, don’t you, Morty?” 

Again, Morty wondered what it mattered if he said it if Rick already knew, but with Rick’s hard cock working between his legs and an arm cording up brutally beneath his back, he knew evasiveness was no longer an option. He swallowed dryly, for the first time grateful for the nausea medicine Rick forced him to take, and said with an air of timid resignation, “I - _oh!_ \- I l-liked the - the way y-you said it, grandpa.” 

Rick’s hips stuttered, a slight overrock and quick correction, his hand going too tight on Morty’s knee only to release the second his grandson whimpered in discomfort. He raised that hand to brush Morty’s sweat damp curls from his forehead, resumed his slow, firm pace, and asked, “What did you like about how I said it, sweetie?”

“I-I don’t - _ahhm_ \- I don’t know, just -” Morty inhaled sharply, flush taking on a sickly, feverish tint as Rick rubbed their cocks together stiff and silken and incessant, and said softly, “- your voice, I guess, th-that’s all.”

Rick rasped out a labored breath, muscles tensing, so obviously curbing an impulse to clutch as hard as he could Morty shook beneath his weight. The rain beat against the shingled roof, a tropical depression blowing in from the Pacific Basin to wash the sulfur and saltpeter away from the soil. Morty concentrated all his attention on the way it sounded; pouring off the gables, collecting in the gutters, rushing down the storm drain to catch in the basin behind the onsen. 

It was so loud, a tremendous wall of vast, white noise, but it wasn’t enough to block out the perverse satisfaction pitching his grandfather’s voice ever darker, ever deeper, “You like it when I talk to you like this, baby?”

Morty choked, and Rick chuckled.

“Ohh, you do, don’t you?” he asked, a forty-some year long pack a day habit rendering his words rough and well-weathered, his teeth flashing wetly in the dim, diffused glow of the teardrop pendants hanging from the ceiling. “That’s good to know.”

Morty went to cover his face, but Rick tsked and pinned his hands back beside his head. “No, no, don’t be embarrassed, now. Lemme see you, baby, c’mon. Don’t hide from it, don’t - it’s alright, oh, it’s alright.”

He kissed his cheek, his temple, smoothed his thumbs over his grandson’s palms, and said far too deep to be fair, “Thank you for telling me, sweetheart.” 

Morty’s eyes widened, a warmth separate but inextricable from arousal spreading through his body. He felt the urge to say, _‘You’re welcome,’_ and bit his tongue to stop it from slipping out. Rick’s grin told him it didn’t matter, though.

He knew exactly what he’d done. 

Rick slid a hand down Morty’s chest to fist his little cock again, stroking at it in time with the supple, steadfast sway of his hips. His cock pulsed between his grandson’s legs, his thrusts taking on a finishline-in-sight second wind, and he kept up a sly, husky commentary as he edged them both to completion, “So fucking cute, s-so sweet for me. Know just what to say to get your grandpa off, don’t you, baby? Bet you’d love dirty talk, listening to me tell you how good you look taking my cock, how goddamn sexy you sound sobbing for me to come inside you, fuck, _fuck_. You’d like that, sweetie, you would, I know - I know you - _god_ , I fucking swear you will.”

Morty wept harder, and Rick rocked against him harder, hiking them higher and higher to a peak Morty didn’t want to see. A thunderous boom shook through the room, causing him to tense involuntarily, and Rick moaned above him, sweat breaking across his wiry chest as he chased after his orgasm and dragged his grandson along into another.

“That’s it, that’s fucking it, hold still, just like that, _juuust_ like that. So good, being such a good little boy for grandpa, just - fuck, just come for me, come for me again and I’ll - I’ll finish, okay? One more and we’re done, I promise, baby. One more time is all I need tonight, I just - I’ve gotta see it again, alright? Just - god, just show grandpa how good he makes you feel, c’mon, c’mon now, sweetie.”

Morty was sure Rick was the one doing all the showing here, but he sank back into the futon, and cleaved to his grandfather’s shoulders, and allowed the weltering flood to wash outwards from his core, realizing with horror it felt a little less like dying every time. 

“ _Fuck, yes,_ ” Rick said, pulling back to watch Morty shiver and convulse as he ejaculated over his stomach a second time. He took his own cock in one hand, and lifted his grandson’s right ass cheek with the other, viciously stroking himself to orgasm while Morty spasmed in the throes of his own.

When Rick came, groaning so deep it sounded painful, he aimed it over his grandson’s hole, coating the entrance with thick, brackish semen. The pale, opaline fluid dripped down Morty’s cleft, glossy, viscous and hot over the freshly defiled flesh, and Rick stared at his handiwork as if spellbound. As Morty came down from the short-lived, empty-headed high of climax, understanding sinking in with humiliation hot on its tail, he began to hyperventilate. 

“Oh, baby,” Rick sighed again, without a hint of veiled irritation or strategic calm. To Morty’s ears, he finally sounded sincere, generous with affection and genuine with content. He scooped him up in his arms, petting his back and basketing him against his chest, going on cradlesong soft, “Don’t worry, don’t panic, now. Grandpa’s got you, grandpa’s here. I’m not gonna - I won’t leave you like this. Not - oh, no, n-not when you’ve been such a good boy for me, Morty.” 

Morty hadn’t been thinking beyond the white-hot shame of slick come cooling between his legs, a layer of pure smut staining the most private part of him, but the moment his grandfather mentioned leaving, he froze. He thought of Rick standing up, and righting his clothes, and leaving him _alone_ , after - after what he'd done, after what Morty had _let him do_ , and he couldn’t breathe. 

In a tiny, panic-stricken whisper, he said, “I don’t w-want you to go, grandpa.”

Rick hummed and stood with him, bracing a hand under his bottom and carrying him over to the washroom. He hoisted his grandson up more securely in his hold as he walked, and said with an easy nod, “I know, baby, I know you don’t. It’s okay, don’t cry, I’m - I’m here. I’m not going anywhere, I promise, I promise, sweetie.” 

For once, Rick’s promises calmed more than tore him down. He thought of his grandfather’s ultimatum the night of their first kiss, and found that months removed from the shock, the repulsion, the sheer, desperate disbelief, what he remembered most of all was the fear of Rick stepping through a portal and never coming back. He’d dreaded him leaving far more than a kiss back then, and that dread had grown in proportion equal to the abuses he’d endured since.

After conceding boundary after boundary, after offering a thousand surrenders, after accepting the cost of his grandfather staying over and over again, nothing was scarier than him leaving.

He’d already invested so much. Everything that had been demanded of him, he’d given. If Rick took all of that - all of _him_ \- and then left - left him with _nothing_ , not even - 

Morty flinched from the thought. He twined his arms tight around Rick’s neck, and said again, smaller, softer, sweeter, “I don’t want you to go, grandpa.”

“Shh, oh, shhh, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not,” Rick said, speaking in a register more suited to soothing an infant than an adolescent. He stepped up into the washroom, and reached down to turn on the tap and begin filling the ofuro, saying over the rushing water and heavy rainfall, “Could never leave such a good boy. You - you did so good for grandpa, didn’t you? We’re just gonna - we’re gonna get you cleaned up, and then we’re gonna lay down, baby, how does that sound?”

Morty looked down into the square, steep sided tub, and said distantly, “We’re - but you’re supposed to rinse off first.”

Rick laughed lightly, and picked him up a little higher to safely step into the bath with him in his arms. He slowly sat down, and said, “I think it’ll be okay to skip the prewash just this once, sweetie.”

The water was near scalding, flowing in from a teak spout pressurized by a groundwater pump, but Morty had soaked in it so often over the past month he’d grown accustomed to the heat. Rick unhooked one of the wooden ladles from the wall behind the tub and dipped it into the water, scooping some out to wet his grandson’s hair. He tipped his chin back and poured the ladle out along Morty’s hairline, weighing his curls down into a dense, deep auburn. 

Morty wrapped his legs around his grandfather’s waist, feeling the come on his stomach and between his legs wash away into the water, and his mouth twisted up into a tearless sob. He ducked his chin into his grandfather’s collarbone, and mumbled out, “‘m sorry, grandpa.”

Rick shushed him patiently, running a hand up and down his back, rinsing another ladleful of steaming water through his hair. “What’re you sorry for, baby?” 

“For w-what I said.”

Rick hummed again, but didn’t say it was okay, so Morty clung to him harder, pressing their chests flush together, and went on shattered and short-winded, “I’m _sorry_. I - I didn’t mean it, Rick.”

“What didn’t you mean, Morty?” Rick asked, untangling the saturated curls at the nape of his grandson’s neck as the water filled in around them. “When you said you wanted to kiss, or - or when you said you thought I was disgusting?” 

Morty iced up, back stiffening, blood stilling, and began to stammer, “I - I didn’t - I d-don’t - grandpa, please, please don’t -”

Rick kept teasing out the knots in his hair, comfortable and calm, and cut him off with another command to hush and settle down. “Hey, hey, I’m not mad anymore, baby. You - you got a little upset, but you made up for it, didn’t you?”

Morty swallowed, hands nervously interlocking behind his grandfather’s neck, and nodded once. He felt he’d much more than just _‘made up for it,’_ but he kept that to himself. He listened to the storm rage on outside, to his heart pound away inside, and tried to find some solace between the two. 

He had to hold on to something, or he was going to slip under the flood, and he was going to drown.

So he bit his lip, and he let Rick play with his hair, and even though a small part of him screamed from miles away that he’d _done nothing wrong_ , he allowed himself to feel forgiven.

He deserved that much, at least.

Rick rinsed away all the evidence of the past hour from his skin, cleaning up the act so thoroughly Morty could almost pretend it hadn't happened. He closed his eyes, and he saw the sunrise back home; he saw Snuffles scratching at his parents’ bedroom door, asking to be let out; he saw his dad in his Star Wars slippers and faded terry cloth robe, shuffling downstairs to put the coffee on and grab the morning newspaper from the front porch.

He could almost pretend he was there, instead of five thousand miles away, naked and trembling in his grandfather’s lap, trying to make sense of how he’d ended up here.

Rick cradled him, and slowly carded his fingers through his smooth, untangled curls, and asked quietly, “Remember when I told you… that you could learn anything I decided to teach you, Morty?”

Morty did. He remembered that unseasonably warm morning in mid-March, the acrid smell of stagnant gas and acetone carb cleaner, the tentative joy he’d felt when he’d first heard, _“Good job, Morty.”_

“Yes, grandpa,” he answered, matching his grandfather’s muted tone. Rick held the back of Morty’s head, and rested his chin on his crown, and made his final promise of the night.

“I’ll teach you how to want this, sweetheart.”

Morty let himself be held, and let the warmth of the water and his grandfather’s body seep into his, and he wondered if he was already drowning.

He would, wouldn’t he?

_“- I’ll be good, grandpa, I promise, I promise I w-will be. I just - please just take us home -”_

_“- I’ll come to bed with you tonight, and I won’t tr-try to get away -”_

_“I… I th-think I… I w-w-want to kiss, grandpa.”_

He’d already learned so much.

…

Morty woke to the clatter of plates and bowls on the other side of the fusuma panels. He tried to sit up, but found an arm had him pinned to a warm, bare chest. He heard a long yawn above him, followed by an annoyed sigh.

“Yeah, Jerry. He’s fine.”

Looking up, he saw Rick holding the phone he’d gotten for him to his ear, rolling his eyes at whatever his dad was saying on the other end of the line. His grandfather glanced down at him, and smirked. “I’m looking right at him. D’you want a fucking picture to prove it or something?”

Morty’s heart stalled, and he gave himself a once over. He was still very much naked, laying atop the crumpled yellow silk of the kimono he’d worn last night, slotted deeply in his grandfather’s embrace. As if that weren’t bad enough, Rick was fully nude, as well, and judging from his expression extremely proud of it. 

Without thinking, he made a bid to grab the phone, but Rick just snatched up his wrist, held it still in midair, and responded to Jerry in a bored drawl, “I’ll let you talk to him when he wakes up. He had a long night.”

Morty couldn’t make out what his father was saying over the rush of blood in his ears. While he wanted to say something, to let his dad know he was right here and awake and so happy he’d called to check in on him, Rick’s hand on his wrist kept him quiet as he ended the call.

“Yeah, yeah, jeez. I’ll let him know. Tell Beth everything’s fine.”

Rick scowled at whatever Jerry’s parting words were, and tossed the phone beside the futon. The moment he turned all of his attention to his grandson, however, the scowl faded, and he asked, “Sleep well, sweetie?”

Morty stared at the phone, and whispered so whoever was preparing the table wouldn’t hear, “Y-you said I could - th-that I could talk to my dad in the morning, Rick.”

“Morty, you broke my fucking phone,” Rick said, mostly amused but with a strong undercurrent of admonishment. He didn’t bother to lower his voice, and Morty knew there was no way the staff member mere meters away couldn’t overhear him. “I think that warrants a slightly longer wait, sweetheart.”

Morty looked over at the hole in the crane’s wings from the night before, and flinched, shrinking down into the futon. He’d forgotten about that.

“O-oh… yeah.”

Rick chuckled as he watched his grandson deflate against his side. He was in rare form, well rested and deeply relaxed in a way Morty had never seen before. He tipped Morty’s chin up, and said pleasant and permissive, “Tell you what, baby. You take your medicine and eat your breakfast, and I’ll let you call him back afterwards. How’s that sound?”

That small voice from last night, the same one that had told him he’d done nothing wrong and didn’t need to be forgiven for anything, spoke up again. It frantically insisted that whether or not he got to talk to his family should never be contingent on satisfying his grandfather’s definition of _‘good behavior,’_ but it was so quiet, so far removed from him, as if foundering in the bottom of a black, fathomless well.

He could eat. To tell his dad about the amazing fireworks he’d seen and ask him how Snuffles was and listen to him complain about how nosy Mr. Benson could be sometimes, he could eat. To hear, _“So when’re you coming home, son?”_ one more time, he could do it. 

If he just took it one bite at a time, it’d be fine. 

He nodded up at Rick, and said, “Th-that sounds… good, grandpa. Thank you.”

He looked back out the hole he’d torn in the fusuma panel, and carefully added on, “And I’m sorry for… getting a little upset.” 

Rick considered him, a cool humor entering his eyes, and Morty began to wonder if he’d said the wrong thing. Just as he opened his mouth to backtrack, to amend, to assure, his grandfather broke into a fulsome smile, and said, “Don’t worry about it. I honestly expected a lot worse, so you’re still outta the red in my book, baby.”

Morty stared up at him, dumbfounded, and Rick laughed, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “It’s just a phone. We’ll go get another today.”

Pale wisps of steam floated over the room divider, the smell of fresh rice and grilled fish permeating his senses, and Morty flushed as his stomach rumbled instead of turned. He didn’t understand why, but when Rick smoothed a hand across his belly and made a pleased, encouraging sound, a spike of humiliation made him wince and curl further into himself.

As much as his nausea hurt, he didn’t want it to go away. 

Rick had made it clear he had to get over it, however, and he pushed his reluctance aside. He was hungry, and he needed to eat, and he couldn’t keep starving himself in a stupid bid for control. It didn’t matter how little of him there was to take; Rick would take everything he had to give, and then he’d take still more than that. 

The clink of dishes ceased, and as Rick kissed down his neck, into the stark dips of his collarbone, over the waxing shadows lining his ribs, Morty stared out the hole in the crane’s wings. His vision dimmed and glazing, his mind unmoored from the moment, he almost didn’t register the eye looking back at him through the hole.

The second he blinked, it was gone. He heard the door quietly open, and close again, and he knew -

But he couldn’t handle it. Not now, not after last night, he just couldn’t. He lay there, and let his grandfather pepper his chest with kisses, running spidery hands down his thighs, between his thighs, touching him where he’d touched him last night. It felt more aimless, less urgent, not so much driving at some lesson or destination as simply relishing the fact that he could.

Rick didn’t make him come again, but he didn’t have to in order to get his point across. 

When Rick had his fill, he stretched and sat up, pulling on a clean yukata without bothering to tie it closed. He unfolded another and wrapped it around Morty’s shoulders, holding it up until Morty slipped his arms through the sleeves, and then dug through his duffel bag to fetch another dose of antiemetic. Morty opened his mouth before he told him to, and his grandfather’s grin was difficult to stomach, but he swallowed it down regardless. 

“Good boy,” Rick said, and Morty tried not to hate himself for letting the praise take some of the bitterness out of the medicine.

Rick stood, groaning in mild pleasure as his joints popped and his bones cracked awake, and Morty got up to trail after him to the table, looking down to tie his robe firmly closed as he went. He didn’t see Rick stop in the middle of the room, so when he bumped into his back he stumbled with a startled, “H-hey -”

Then he saw what his grandfather was looking at, and fell silent. 

There, in the center of the table, sat a fishbowl. A little glass bubble, the bottom filled with prismatic blue marbles and decorated with a plastic fern, providing a hiding place for two goldfish. 

A white faced anekin, and a black finned demekin. 

Morty walked around him to kneel at the table, looking closer at the fish. He noticed that the marbles looked just like the one inside the bottle of soda Rick bought for him last night, and when the white and orange fish edged out from under one of the fake fronds, he smiled. 

Then Rick sat down behind him, and the smile faded from his face. 

“Well, would you look at that,” he said, reaching an arm out to lightly tap at the glass, frightening the fish back into hiding. “Someone’s thinking about you, Morty.”

Morty shivered at the hot breath catching in the whorls of his ear, and grabbed his grandfather’s wrist with both his hands. He pulled the hand back to his chest, setting it over his pounding heart, and said in a rush, “Please l-let me keep them, Rick.” 

Rick made a contemplative noise, rolling the stiffness from his shoulders as he mulled it over. Morty turned to look back at him, and his expression was coy as he said, “What’ll you give me if I let you, sweetie?”

Morty dwindled at the obvious lechery in his tone, but swallowed to steel his nerve, and answered, “I - I could… sit on y-your lap - out in the hot springs, like you wanted me to, grandpa.” 

Rick looked interested, but held out his assent, so Morty clutched his wrist tighter, and screwed his eyes shut, and whispered, “A-a-and you - we could take pictures, too, but not like - not like ones for mom this time.”

Morty didn’t have to see his grandfather’s eyes to watch them dilate with lust, to go hooded and devoid of goodness. Rick looped his arms around him, and kissed his messy curls, and said, “Alright, baby. Color me convinced.” 

Though he was afraid of what he’d just traded for it, looking at the precious gift on the table, Morty knew the exchange was worth it.

He gave his grandfather a peck on the lips, and told him thank you, and thought not of the sixty-eight days until his birthday, but of the girl in the white fox mask. He thought of her carrying the fish they’d caught together back to her home, and carefully slipping them in a little tank she’d filled with marbles from soda bottles, and setting them on the table in his room without a word. 

He ate his breakfast, and he decided the next time he saw her, he would ask her for her name. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song mentioned in this chapter is _Breezeblocks_ by alt-J.
> 
> That callback to Chapter 1 felt pretty fucking good, didn't it? It's okay, you can let me know. I won't tell anyone ;)
> 
> With this chapter finished, I finally have the full story well and truly planned out. Researching festivals in Japan was a lot of fun, and I hope I got the feel of the culture across with accuracy and respect. I know we just spent a long time in a hot spring with no actual soaking in the hot spring, but that'll change next chapter, for sure lol
> 
> So, lot of things I still very much want to touch on that had to be skipped/glossed over for length, but hopefully I'll be able to do a couple more major themes in this story justice over the remaining few chapters. That said, what did you think? Was this anything like what you were expecting? Did you enjoy the fireworks?
> 
> Thank you so, so much for sticking around, hope you enjoyed reading this as much I've enjoyed writing it, and to everyone who's commented, I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it a thousand more; you're a treasure, you encourage me so much, and I always look forward to hearing your thoughts <3
> 
> Signing off,
> 
> firstbornking


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